:TT€RS-FROM-fl 


WWORTHL6Y-UND6RWQDD 


EX     LIBR.IS 


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LETTERS  from  a 
PRAIRIE   GARDEN 


"A  lord  of  dust,  an  emperor  of  dreams." 

WANG   PO   OF   THE   SEVENTH   DYNASTY 


LETTERS  FROM  A 
PRAIRIE  GARDEN 


BY 

EDNA  WORTHLEY  UNDERWOOD 


BOSTON 

Marshall  Jones  Company 


MDCCCCXIX 


Copyright,  1919 
BY  MARSHALL  JONES  COMPANY 


THE-PLIMPTON-PEISS 

NOHWOOD-MASS-U'S-A 


DEDICATED 

TO  YOUTH  — AND   THE 
SUNLIGHT  ON  THE  PLAINS 


FOREWORD 

THE  "Letters  from  a  Prairie  Garden,"  are 
genuine  letters  and  not  fiction.     They 
went  through  the  mail.   An  explanatory  word 
about  their  origin  may  not  be  amiss. 

Some  years  ago  a  famous  artist  came  to 
a  certain  mid-western  city  on  business  con- 
nected with  his  profession.  He  had  an  ac- 
quaintance who  lived  in  the  hotel  where  the 
writer  lived  at  that  time  and  with  whom  he 
talked  over  the  phone.  The  writer  frequently 
happened  to  be  talking  at  the  same  time,  and 
the  wires  crossing,  he  heard  me  laugh  repeat- 
edly, and  he  nicknamed  me  "the  woman  who 
laughs." 

At  length  he  called  up  the  hotel  clerk  and 
asked  to  be  permitted  to  talk  over  the  wire 
with  "the  woman  who  laughs."  The  clerk 
connected  my  apartment. 

In  this  way  the  "Letters"  (which  must 
now  tell  the  rest  of  the  story  themselves) 
originated,  and  it  explains  likewise  why  the 
subjects  discussed  are  so  often  pictures  and 
objects  of  art.  They  were  written  to  a  con- 
noisseur of  things  beautiful. 

E.  W.  U. 


IN  THE  CITY 


LETTERS   from  a 
PRAIRIE    GARDEN 


Y, 


OU  WISH  TO  CORRESPOND  WITH  ME, 

with  a  woman  whom  you  have  not  seen,  of  whom 
you  know  nothing?  And  just  because  by  an  acci- 
dental crossing  of  the  wires  you  have  heard  a 
voice  over  the  phone  and  called  me  "the  woman 
who  laughs?"  You  say  you  like  laughter  because 
laughter  is  rare  in  the  world?  You  think  I  must 
be  happy,  and  you  wish  to  know  some  one  who 
is  happy  when  the  rest  of  the  world  is  sad?  Am 
I  happy? 

Perhaps  I  am!  And  perhaps  happiness  is  just 
a  garment  my  heart  wears  in  this  present  garden 
of  time  where  I  happen  to  be. 

If  I  am  happy  it  is  because  I  have  developed  a 
philosophical  indifference  to  results.  I  say  to  my- 
self (and  I  believe  and  live  accordingly) ,  I  am  just 
a  leaf  upon  a  limitless  river  of  matter,  and  it  is 
not  of  the  slightest  consequence  —  to  me  nor  to 
any  one  else  —  what  becomes  of  the  leaf.  The 
river  goes  on  forever.  Sometime  the  leaf  will 
find  the  sun. 

3 


4          LETTERS    FROM    A    PRAIRIE    GARDEN 

I  have  found  the  world  beautiful  and  interest- 
ing, and  my  dream  and  desire  of  it  changing. 

What  makes  my  dream,  you  inquire? 

Many  things!    Let  me  think! 

When  I  awake  in  the  morning  I  am  glad  to  see 
the  edge  of  the  day  gay  with  h'ght.  I  think  of 
the  sparkling  water  of  the  cold  bath  which  is 
awaiting  me.  After  that  is  over,  the  good  smell 
of  coffee  singing  in  the  kitchen  upon  a  black 
stove.  As  I  walk  to  the  dining  room  I  see  through 
a  window,  blue  sky  and  swaying  trees.  This 
pleases  me.  While  I  am  drinking  the  coffee  I 
think  of  the  things  that  I  should  like  to  do.  My 
pleasure  in  them  is  not  spoiled  by  the  fact  that 
there  is  little  probability  of  my  being  permitted 
to  do  any  of  them. 

What  did  I  think  of  this  morning  with  the 
coffee?  I  thought  first  (because  the  wind  was 
high  and  the  clouds  were  scudding  ahead  of  it) 
that  I  should  like  to  be  a  strong  peasant  woman 
putting  wet,  washed  linen  upon  the  line,  under 
a  blue  sky,  with  wild,  flying,  white  clouds  and 
a  rollicking  wind.  And  then  I  thought  I  should 
like  to  rake  the  hay  in  the  sunny  grass  land  by 
the  Loire,  bare  of  head  and  unbound  of  neck, 
like  those  big-muscled  peasant  women  of  Lher- 
mitte.  And  I  should  like  to  gather  grapes  and 
tread  the  wine  in  some  high,  mountain  vineyard 
of  old  Spain,  with  the  violet  silk  of  the  sea  be- 
neath, and  above,  thin  summits  sharp  with  light. 


IN    THE    CITY  5 

These  letters  of  mine  will  be  merely  a  sort  of 
pillaw  d  la  the  oriental  manner  of  making;  fact, 
fancy,  criticism,  a  commingling  of  whatever  the 
winds  that  arise  with  each  new  sun,  may  blow 
across  my  mind. 

And  since  I  like  dreams  better  than  reality, 
you  shall  be  to  me  always  a  dream  —  my  dream 
correspondent.  I  hear  you  protesting.  But  that 
is  useless!  In  not  permitting  you  to  see  me,  I 
do  not  permit  you  to  become  disillusioned.  My 
letters  to  you  will  be  merely  "des  songes  du 
plus  beau  des  soirs." 

When  you  are  tired  of  me  I  will  fade  back  into 
that  unreality  from  which  I  came.  That  is  best. 
Write  if  you  wish. 

E. 


i 


(Some  months  later) 


AM  WRITING  THIS  TUESDAY  NIGHT 
—  an  answer  to  your  letter  —  just  before  dressing 
for  dinner,  in  order  that  you  may  get  it  in  the 
morning  at  the  studio,  before  you  begin  work, 
to  have  with  the  first  pipe  smoke  of  that  good 
tobacco  you  have  told  me  about,  which  inspirits 
you  for  the  day. 

To-night  I  see  The  Ballet.  It  may  be  we  shall 
be  sitting  near  each  other,  and  all  unconsciously 
our  eyes  will  meet.  Then  when  the  orchestra  is 
playing  the  Bacchanale  of  Glosunow,  some  vi- 
bratory intelligence  may  pass  between  us,  and  tell 
us  how  we  met  in  the  flesh  once  long  ago,  and  how 
now  we  are  groping  in  the  dark  to  find  each  other. 
Life  is  only  a  somewhat  intelligent  playing  of 
blind  man's  buff  at  best. 

The  dinner  hour  has  come.    Good  night. 

E. 


M- 


_Y  WINDOWS  ARE  OPEN.  THE  BLUE 

wind  comes  in.  Strangely  enough  it  comes  from 
the  direction  of  your  studio.  I  visualize  you 
clearly  —  you  whom  I  have  not  seen,  —  and  in 
front  of  you  the  great  canvas  and .  the  little 
brushes.  I  see  you  blow  purple  smoke  rings.  I 
know  what  thoughts  float  upon  them. 

I  took  a  nap  out  of  doors  Sunday  —  in  a  field. 
The  grass  is  good  to  sleep  upon.  I  said  to  myself 

—  it  is  high  time  I  got  acquainted  with  the  grass, 
because  I  am  going  to  sleep  under  it  long.     I 
hope  the  grass  will  like  me!    But  the  worms  are 
going  to  be  disappointed.    When  I  first  go  there 

—  to  sleep  under  the  grass  —  I  shall  say  to  them: 
Look  as  hard  as  you  wish!    Search  all  you  can! 
You  will  not  find  a  thing!    I  have  lived  up  the 
joy  of  me.    Not  a  single  shining  particle  will  you 
find! 

If  it  is  for  joy  you  are  seeking,  go  to  him  who 
has  the  soul  of  an  elf,  and  who  lived  once  by  an 
Irish  Sea,  and  who  told  me  how  he  used  to  play 
the  fiddle  in  Dooney! 

E. 


I 


HAVE  BEEN  OUT  TO-DAY  AGAIN,  THE 

good  wind  buffeting  me  about.  In  my  eyes, 
opposite  the  golf  links  upon  the  hill,  are  trees 
whose  leaves  are  the  color  of  all  the  bronzes  in 
the  world.  Some  of  them  are  the  hue  of  dragons 
that  crawl  in  stone  down  walls  of  old  Korean 
palaces  where  I  dream  myself  sometimes  to  be. 

This  Korean  palace  where  you  and  I  have 
been  so  many  times  is  lonely  and  deserted.  No 
one  else  goes  there  now.  It  stands  upon  the 
shore  of  the  sea  where  the  sand  is  fine  as  dust 
and  black  as  powdered  jet.  The  waves  that 
come  tumbling  in  upon  it  —  fretted  by  the  little 
islands  that  dot  the  Asian  coast  —  are  of  a  blue 
that  is  pure  and  fine.  And  they  have  ruffles 
of  foam  upon  them  like  white  lace.  How  happy 
I  am!  Nothing  can  spoil  a  pleasure  for  me  here. 
And  this  palace  is  full  of  faded  and  forgotten 
memories,  that  quiver  into  transient  being  again 
on  the  wings  of  the  night,  thrilled  back  to  life 
by  the  evocative  power  of  you  and  me. 

There  are  faint  perfumes  that  we  can  not  grasp 
enough  to  distinguish,  that  float  teasingly  out  of 
reach,  faint  ghosts  of  sandal  wood  and  cinnabar. 
They  drift  over  us  and  touch  our  eyelids.  Dis- 

8 


IN   THE   CITY  g 

turbing  thoughts  vanish.  We  open  our  eyelids 
again  in  a  dim,  gold  room.  We  hear  music 
evoked  from  leather  and  thin  silver  strings.  Then 
we  go  out  down  a  carven  stairway  that  is  quaint 
and  black,  to  that  sea  that  smiles  bluely  on  to 
the  southern  Pole,  to  swim  and  plunge.  We 
come  gayly  back  to  the  midnight  of  the  palace 
and  up  the  carven  stairway,  where  black  slaves 
dry  our  bodies  and  rub  into  them  scented  oils. 

Thereupon  you  tell  me  that  you  have  a  secret. 
You  take  my  hand  to  lead  me  and  make  me 
promise  to  shut  my  eyes  tightly  and  not  to  look. 
I  open  them  again  in  a  room  which  I  have  never 
seen,  a  somber  room,  lined  round  with  ancient 
chests  where  dull,  inset  metals  show.  You  open 
the  chests  with  an  air  of  gayety  and  bravoura. 
They  are  filled  with  clothes  —  tunics  —  armor  of 
metal;  embroidered  gauzes,  tissues,  and  soft 
cotton  fabrics  from  Indian  looms. 

You  dress  as  a  warrior  —  a  samurai  —  in  over- 
lapping silver  and  jade.  You  are  strong  limbed 
and  splendid  to  look  upon.  I  wear  a  robe  of  old 
rose,  whereon  is  limned  in  shadowed  silver  the 
fruit  of  Buddha.  As  soon  as  we  are  dressed  you 
rush  me  away  to  dine  in  a  lattice-work  pavilion 
through  which  we  can  see  waves  glitter.  You 
tell  me  that  the  winking  light  upon  them  is  the 
laughter  of  the  pagan  gods  —  their  undying 
pagan  laughter  —  laughing  on  and  on.  They 
bring  us  fruit,  strange  and  of  a  marvelous  fra- 


10        LETTERS    FROM    A    PRAIRIE    GARDEN 

grance,  of  which  we  do  not  even  know  the  name. 
I  say  that  it  is  good.  I  put  my  lips  to  it.  I  stick 
my  teeth  into  it.  And  then  I  run  back  to  the 
palace.  You  follow.  I  run  on  and  on.  You  can 
not  catch  me.  We  play  hide  and  seek  in  the  an- 
cient dwelling  of  the  dim,  rich  rooms.  At  last  I 
pause  and  wait  for  you  to  find  me.  This  room 
has  seats  of  gold-threaded  brocade.  Around  the 
walls  are  tiny  balls  of  painted  glass  suspended  by 
strings  of  silk.  I  can  hear  them  shiver  and  shiver 
—  these  tiny  glass  balls  in  the  air. 

This  is  the  gorgeous  dwelling  which  I  build 
myself  out  of  dreams!  In  the  real  world  it  may 
be  that  I  am  like  that  Peri  whom  Mahomet 
cursed  and  made  to  stand  outside  the  gates  of 
Paradise.  But  in  the  world  of  dreams  all  things 
are  mine. 

E. 


I 


AM  AFRAID  I  CAN  NOT  AGREE  WITH 

you!  (And  what  right  have  I  to  disagree  with 
an  artist  like  yourself?)  I  do  not  believe  in  that 
old  dictum  of  the  Greek  philosophers  that  art 
was  meant  to  imitate  something.  Art  does  not 
imitate!  It  creates.  It  builds  a  little  indepen- 
dent world  of  pleasure.  It  is  the  visible  expres- 
sion of  joy.  It  makes  on  its  own  responsibility 
a  miniature  universe.  Back  of  it  is  the  divine 
force  —  love.  It  is  really  a  part  of  our  religion 
and  our  faith.  It  is  related  to  all  things  noble 
the  mind  has  compassed. 

Back  in  the  unsentient,  voiceless  beginning, 
where  under  the  name  of  attraction  the  power 
is  still  effective,  it  draws  crystals  together  in  the 
depths  of  the  earth  into  marvelous,  glittering 
harmony,  and  frost  particles  on  window  panes 
into  mathematical  figures.  Because  this  is  the 
motive  power  back  of  it  —  and  not  the  desire 
to  imitate  anything  —  we  understand  why  it  is 
not  submissive  to  command.  What  king  could 
command  our  love  and  our  joy?  How  much 
gold  would  it  take  to  set  the  frost  to  building  on 
the  windows?  If  it  were  true  that  its  province 
were  imitative,  what  does  music  try  to  imitate? 
And  what  does  architecture  imitate? 


12        LETTERS   FROM   A    PRAIRIE    GARDEN 

It  can  not  be  commercialized.  The  mainspring 
is  something  unrelated  to  greed.  When  the  artist 
works  from  any  motive  besides  the  vision  within 
him  and  the  joy  of  doing,  the  result  can  not  be 
of  consequence.  This  creative  sprite  is  free. 
The  art  of  primitive  races  is  finer  than  any- 
thing we  can  do  to-day,  just  because  this  prin- 
ciple of  joy  was  more  active.  As  soon  as  reason, 
effort,  ambition,  begin  to  overbalance  intuitive 
power,  art  dies,  and  then  it  begins  to  be  com- 
mercialized. It  must  always  be  the  result  of  not 
trying. 

Hear  what  Degas  said  to  a  young  artist  who 
questioned  him  about  success:  "In  my  day  we 
did  not  arrive.  In  my  day  we  worked  for  art, 
for  beauty,  for  the  mere  pleasure  of  working, 
and  we  never  thought  of  buyers,  nor  medals,  nor 
money,  nor  applause.  .  .  .  We  despised  —  we 
ignored  —  everything  that  was  not  our  art." 

E. 


w. 


HEN  YOU  CALLED  ME  UP  ON  THE 

phone  this  morning,  I  heard  sleep  upon  your 
voice.  I  knew  just  how  heavily  it  was  lying  in 
your  eyes.  I  wondered  if  you  had  dreamed  of 
that  deserted  Korean  palace  by  the  sea  whose 
sand  is  black  as  powdered  jet. 

You  would  be  surprised  —  and  greatly  —  if  you 
knew  the  places  you  have  visited  with  me.  With 
me  in  my  dreams  you  have  been  a  greater  traveler 
than  was  Marco  Polo  the  Venetian. 

I  must  procure  another  copy  of  my  picture  of 
Herodias  to  send  you.  I  am  surprised  that  you 
do  not  know  it.  Constant  drew  her.  I  keep  her 
always  near  to  make  me  remember  the  antique 
world  of  splendid  calm.  I  like  pictures,  drawings, 
units  of  decoration,  better  than  books.  One  can 
not  understand  a  picture  at  a  glance  any  better 
than  a  book.  Time  and  silence  are  needed. 
Lines  that  are  seemingly  unimportant  have  much 
to  say. 

It  is  in  Eastern  art  that  I  am  especially  inter- 
ested. The  Chinese  have  color  terms  that  de- 
light me.  They  have  a  blue  they  call  "blue  of 
the  sky  after  the  rain,"  and  "blue  of  the  sky  after 
the  snow."  Then  there  is  another  they  desig- 


l4    LETTERS  FROM  A  PRAIRIE  GARDEN 

nate  "degradation  of  the  rose."  What  a  weary 
and  regretful  red  that  must  be.  It  is  the  black- 
eyed  races  that  have  understood  and  loved  color 
best.  If  the  great  colorists  of  the  world  could 
be  listed  I  think  a  majority  of  them  would  be 
found  to  have  dark  eyes. 

Old  Chinese  virtuosos  of  precious  porcelains 
possess  a  surprising  collection  of  information  — 
which  they  declare  authentic  —  about  these  beau- 
tiful objects  they  have  loved.  There  is  a  story 
told  by  Su  Tung-po  that  in  the  year  eleven 
hundred  A.D.  there  was  in  existence  a  pair  of 
vases  that  gave  the  combined  music  of  the  flute 
and  the  organ,  whenever  their  owner  was  happy 
and  giving  a  banquet.  As  soon  as  the  banquet 
was  over  and  the  lights  out,  and  the  guests  de- 
parted, the  music  ceased.  In  no  other  way 
could  it  be  lured  forth. 

Wan  Yen-chih  writes  an  essay  about  an  earth- 
enware basin  which  he  once  owned.  In  the 
winter  ice-pictures  formed  in  it  daily,  and  no 
two  pictures  were  repeated.  Some  days  he 
looked  within  and  saw  peach  blossoms  and 
peonies;  on  other  days  wild  geese,  bamboo 
thickets  and  mountains,  pink-legged  herons  and 
flying  cranes.  He  writes:  "I  afterward  had  it 
mounted  with  silver  and  preserved  in  a  silk-lined 
case.  When  the  cold  weather  comes  I  invite 
guests  to  enjoy  the  sight."  And  there  were  cen- 
sers that  gave  the  sweet  refreshing  sound  of  the 


IN   THE    CITY  l5 

voices  of  wild  birds  hidden  in  thickets.  Espe- 
cially beloved  was  one  which  was  nick-named 
"the  pee-wit  censer."  Who  would  think  those 
dull-looking,  pig-tailed  Chinamen  had  thoughts 
like  these? 

I  should  like  to  have  one  of  those  numerous 
honeymoons  —  which  you  declare  you  are  de- 
sirous of  spending  with  me  —  in  southeastern 
China,  by  a  little  lake  called  Biwa,  because  it  is 
the  shape  of  the  two-stringed  lute;  in  a  toy  house 
of  bamboo  buried  in  wisteria.  At  night  the  wis- 
teria by  the  lake  of  the  lute  is  the  color  of  silver 
smoke.  Perhaps  it  would  not  be  bad  to  have 
as  many  honeymoons  as  there  are  yellow  suns 
in  those  fabulous  prints  of  old  China. 

E. 


I 


HAVE  A  PICTURE  BY  FRAGONARD  OF 

a  French  lady  holding  a  billet  doux  daintily  be- 
tween two  pointed  fingers,  a  round-eyed  poodle 
beside  her,  and  painted  in  front  of  a  leaded  glass 
window  in  a  blond  satin  boudoir.  The  first  time 
I  looked  at  that  picture  I  longed  to  be  in  the  old 
France  Fragonard  knew.  How  merrily  and  hap- 
pily did  they  live  then!  With  what  witl  With 
what  grace!  With  what  freedom!  They  did 
not  spend  their  time  in  re-forming  and  remaking 
the  world.  They  looked  out  upon  it  with  clear 
Greek  eyes  and  saw  that  it  was  good  and  let  it 
alone.  One  entire  afternoon  I  had  the  picture 
in  front  of  me  fancying  that  I  was  making  merry 
at  expense  of  the  lady  of  the  beads. 

I  should  like  the  France  of  Fragonard!  I 
should  like  to  live  there  in  a  great,  grey  chateau, 
in  which  there  was  a  hidden  room  known  only 
to  two  people.  Sometime  —  when  we  were  in 
that  hidden  room  —  gayly  and  frivolously  dressed 
and  radiant  with  life,  we  could  not  find  the  spring 
to  let  us  out.  We  never  find  it.  And  there  we 
die  together  in  our  gay  clothes,  our  folly  and  our 
laughter.  Some  decades  later  —  Balzac,  say, 
finds  us,  and  writes  a  story  about  us,  a  persua- 

16 


IN    THE    CITY  17 

sive  little  book  of  old  French  love  —  of  life  in 
the  great  free  century. 

What  a  merry  gentleman  of  old  France  you 
would  have  made  with  your  grace  of  story  tell- 
ing and  your  Irish  laughter! 

E. 


I 


AM  BUSY  TO-DAY.  I  AM  GIVING  TO 
a  dealer  in  Dream  Land  the  order  to  bind  my 
Greek  and  Latin  books.  They  are  little  books, 
all  of  them,  and  printed  on  parchment  or  paper 
that  is  old  and  fine.  They  are  to  be  bound  in 
rough  leather  and  white  pig  skin. 

My  Tacitus  I  think  is  an  Elzevir.  (The  covers 
and  front  pages  are  gone.)  It  is  not  larger  than 
two  inches  by  four.  The  Terence  was  printed 
in  London  (typis  F.  Collins)  in  1708.  Virgil  is 
of  a  delightful  size,  about  three  inches  wide  by 
five  in  length.  It  is  decorated  with  a  line  en- 
graving and  bears  the  stamp  of  London  1688. 
The  Horace  is  even  smaller  and  older.  It  was 
made  in  Holland  and  it  is  of  a  charming  format. 
Roterdami  Idibus  Novembri  1667,  the  last  page 
informs  us  plainly.  Some  are  from  Amsterdam, 
others  from  Paris.  One  or  two  are  distinguished 
by  the  notes  of  Casaubon,  but  unfortunately  the 
covers  are  missing,  hence  you  understand  my 
haste.  I  do  not  wish  them  to  perish  in  their  old 
age  for  lack  of  a  protecting  overcoat.  A  few 
covers  are  to  be  colored  purple  flecked  with 
crimson,  which  is  the  color  of  a  Siberian  ame- 
thyst. And  a  few  of  these  covers  are  to  be  set 
with  unpolished  gems  and  dull  gold,  after  the 

18 


IN    THE    CITY  IQ 

manner  of  the  sacred  books  of  old  Russia.  But 
for  my  own  personal  pleasure  I  care  only  that 
a  book  be  small  in  size  and  clear  of  print. 

On  top  of  the  cases  where  these  pagan  writers 
are,  I  shall,  in  spring  (And  is  it  not  always  spring 
when  the  heart  is  happy?)  place  jars  filled  with 
pale  crocuses  and  slender  iris.  These  are  the 
flowers  they  loved  best  in  life. 

My  tiger  on  the  floor  is  talkative  to-day,  and 
reminiscent.  He  has  promised  to  tell  me  lots 
of  things  of  love  in  the  jungle  and  life  under 
tropic  stars.  I  am  going  to  have  him  tell  me 
how  the  black  rain  falls  on  those  sultry  tropic 
nights,  with  the  fitful  wind  between.  And  when 
he  tells  me  I  shall  recall  how  blue  the  water  is 
where  the  lotus  flower  was  born. 

I  have  placed  him  facing  my  picture  of  Hero- 
dias.  They  look  alike,  you  know.  And  they  used 
to  know  each  other  long  ago  —  long,  long  before 
she  became  a  woman,  when  she  lived  in  the 
jungle  with  him.  It  promises  well,  does  it  not? 
And  he  is  going  to  tell  me  how  once  when  she 
was  sleeping  beside  her  lord,  the  tetrach,  upon 
a  bed  of  cedar  wood  and  gold,  upon  the  palace 
roof,  she  heard  him  calling  in  the  desert,  calling 
to  her  across  the  night.  That  was  the  way  he 
met  his  death  —  my  tiger  —  and  became  just  a 
rug  upon  my  floor.  When  he  tells  it  all  to  me 
I  will  write  it  down  in  detail  for  you  to  read. 

E. 


w, 


HAT  MADE  YOU  TAKE  IT  INTO  YOUR 

head  all  of  a  sudden,  my  good  Unknown,  that 
you  wished  to  read  "Madame  Bovary"?  To  be 
sure  I  will  send  you  my  copy.  That  —  in  my 
opinion  —  and  Turgenev's  "Smoke"  are  among 
the  most  perfectly  constructed  books  that  have 
been  written.  And  a  good  month's  work  for 
Flaubert  was  twenty  pages.  The  French  are 
still  writing  of  "Salammbo"  and  "Madame  Bo- 
vary."  And  the  French  know  what  art  is.  I  saw 
in  a  magazine  just  the  other  day  an  article  en- 
titled "Bovary ism"  —  in  the  Mercure  de  France. 
I  did  not  read  it.  I  did  not  have  time  just  then. 
So  I  do  not  know  whether  it  was  flesh  or  good  red 
herring.  But  "  Madame  Bovary  "  was  very  much 
flesh.  You  will  enjoy  that  book.  And  you  may 
like  her.  I  fear  I  shall  be  jealous  of  these  women 
of  the  world  of  books  whom  you  are  sure  to  like 
and  to  see  so  often. 

There  is  Tess  of  the  d'Urbervilles,  with  the  lips 
so  red  a  man  remembered  them  always,  and  they 
sent  him  to  destruction.  Dear  Unknown,  look 
not  upon  lips  like  hers  when  they  are  red!  And 
there  is  a  woman  in  an  old  Italian  garden  who 
has  a  throat  such  as  the  Pre-Raphaelites  painted. 

30 


IN   THE    CITY  21 

She  is  very  white.  She  is  frail.  She  has  eyes  as 
deeply  blue  as  the  sea  by  Sicily,  and  hands  such 
as  only  women  of  race  have,  and  a  voice  sweet 
with  the  singing  vowels  of  Italy.  D'Annunzio 
has  shown  her  to  us  hi  "Le  Vergini  delle  Rocce." 
(The  Maidens  of  the  Rock.)  Dear  Unknown,  I 
pray  you  never  to  go  near  her!  She  is  more  dan- 
gerous than  Circe.  And  you  must  not  look  upon 
Foscarina,  which  is  the  name  d'Annunzio  gives 
to  Duse  in  "II  Fuoco"  (The  Flame.)  And  you 
must  keep  away  from  Anna  Karenina,  that  sub- 
tle Slav.  The  dangerous  Calmuck  and  the  treach- 
erous oriental  are  both  in  her  just  underneath 
the  surface.  There  is  Sonnica,  too,  the  hetaira, 
in  her  seductive  Greco-Roman  garden  by  Sa- 
guntum  (as  Vlasco  Ibanez  portrays  her)  when 
swarthy,  black-browed  Hannibal  waited  with  his 
angry  legions  outside  the  gate.  Go  not  near 
those  old  gardens  of  Greece!  And  I  should  be 
afraid  of  Beatrice  and  Fiammetta  and  Francesca. 
But  if  I  were  a  man  I  should  be  guilty  of  no  in- 
fidelities, not  even  of  the  brain  and  of  art.  I 
should  love  only  Thais.  For  me  no  other  woman 
would  exist. 

E. 


Y, 


OU  DECLARE  THE  REASON  I  WILL 

not  let  you  see  me  is  because  I  have  so  many 
wrinkles?  Of  course!  Why  did  you  not  guess 
it  before?  And  you  say  at  the  same  time  that 
you  do  not  like  the  Herodias  I  sent  you? 

Mortal  sins,  both  of  them!  Of  course  I  have 
wrinkles.  They  are  the  hieroglyphs  of  living. 
My  life  is  written  there,  the  sum  total  of  my 
thinking,  of  how  many  times  I  have  frowned 
and  laughed.  When  I  meet  you  on  that  star  in 
space  you  shall  read  them  for  me.  Perhaps  you 
will  find  some  that  you  made  yourself.  Will 
they  be  sad  or  merry  ones? 

When  I  become  old  —  and  wrinkled  —  perhaps 
I  shall  go  to  sleep  forever.  Or  perhaps  I  shall 
live  and  read  Catullus,  who  was  the  spirit  incar- 
nate of  youth,  that  glorious,  golden  youth  of 
Rome.  (I  have  another  edition  of  him!)  It  may 
be  I  shall  decide  to  live  on  in  order  that  I  may 
find  out  for  myself,  just  by  how  much  he  is  the 
most  perfect  poet.  When  I  think  of  Catullus  I 
think  in  symbols,  and  oftenest  of  an  amber 
honey. 

Or  perhaps  when  I  get  old  I  shall  take  to  drink- 
ing cordials  to  give  me  momentarily  the  warmth 

22 


IN    THE    CITY  23 

and  the  pleasant  glow  of  youth,  such  cordials  as 
Louis  the  Fourteenth  had  brewed  for  his  despair- 
ing old  age.  And  it  may  be  I  shall  be  like  Gautier 
and  dream  wonderful  things  over  the  light  of 
candles.  But  better  than  all,  I  think  I  would 
rather  live  on,  and  meet  you  —  on  some  radiant 
planet  in  space.  And  there  always  I  shall  have 
the  advantage  of  you,  as  years  count,  because  I 
have  the  soul  of  a  nymph  and  I  have  never  grown 
up. 

I  do  not  know  how  I  can  forgive  you  for  not 
liking  my  Herodias.  She  is  my  splendid,  tawny 
beast  without  a  soul,  who  rests  and  brings  back 
joy  to  me  after  the  presence  of  modern  women. 
She  does  not  preach  any  sermon.  She  does  not 
try  to  teach  anything.  She  never  belonged  to 
a  woman's  club  nor  desired  to  become  a  suffra- 
gette. She  has  never  had  any  fads.  She  is  not  a 
devotee  of  -ologies  or  -isms.  She  is  not  acquainted 
with  new  thought  or  old  thought.  She  cares 
neither  for  uplift  work,  aviation,  the  fourth  di- 
mension, a  meatless  diet,  nor  the  unsolved  problems 
of  another  life.  This  is  one  of  the  great  pictures. 
And  you  do  not  like  it! 

Constant's  Herodias!  Please  look  at  her  again. 
Observe  the  splendid  massive  shoulders  that  at 
the  same  time  are  so  marvelously  supple.  The 
skin  that  covers  them  is  tawny  and  softer  than 
satin.  See,  too,  how  he  has  painted  a  tigress 
and  a  woman  at  one  and  the  same  time.  The 


24        LETTERS    FROM    A    PRAIRIE    GARDEN 

hands  —  their  marvelous  repose,  their  strength, 
their  cruelty.  The  terrific  quiet  of  that  waiting 
posture  which  she  could  change  more  swiftly 
than  your  eye  could  record  the  movement.  The 
beaten  gold  above  her  brow.  The  huge  circlets 
in  her  ears.  And  the  one  figure  of  adornment 
upon  that  silken  gauze  that  is  wrapped  about 
her  —  that  barbaric,  embroidered  leaf.  Where 
do  you  suppose  she  found  it,  that  unique  gauze 
with  its  one  distinguished  decoration?  In  the 
many  conversations  we  have  had  I  have  never 
been  able  to  make  her  tell  me. 

(Of  course  she  talks  to  me!  But  she  would 
not  to  you  because  you  do  not  like  her.) 

She  does  not  wish  any  one  else  to  own  a  robe 
like  it.  And  yet  I  think  I  know  where  it  came 
from.  On  the  tablelands  of  Iran,  that  go  crawl- 
ing up,  stepwise,  to  those  tortured  mountain 
summits  that  frown  down  upon  India,  there  are 
little  earth-built  villages  set  in  green  meadows 
dotted  with  white  poppy  flowers.  It  was  in  one 
of  those  little  villages,  by  the  old  caravan  road 
that  leads  to  Ispahan,  that  that  gauze  was  woven. 
The  women  there  wear  colored  and  embroidered 
gauzes  to  cover  their  faces  instead  of  the  black 
veils  of  certain  other  cities  of  Persia.  (I  hope 
there  will  be  one  left  for  me  to  buy  when  I  get 
there!) 

See  how  splendidly  Constant  placed  her,  against 
a  dark,  hard  background,  and  seated  upon  a 


IN   THE    CITY  26 

rough  rug  of  fur,  that  is  as  untamed  and  harsh 
as  her  own  soul.  And  the  mouth  of  the  immortal 
thirst!  The  deep  shadowed  eyes  that  make  one 
think  of  the  brutal  twilights  of  a  primitive  world. 
The  suppleness  of  the  joints,  which  is  that  of  the 
jungle-born!  The  throat,  great-muscled  and 
strong!  But  the  shoulders  are  most  beautiful  of 
all.  Women  of  to-day  do  not  have  shoulders 
like  those. 

She  has  looked  down  upon  me  from  the  bare, 
ugly  walls  of  hotel  rooms  in  many  cities  for  years. 
I  can  not  forgive  your  not  liking  her.  You  say 
she  has  no  soul?  Of  course  not!  That  is  why 
she  was  such  a  success  and  wore  the  crown  of  a 
queen.  Heart  and  soul  will  ruin  the  best  regu- 
lated woman  in  the  world. 

I  have  a  pictured  Fortuna,  too,  —  a  drawing — 
that  I  enjoy  and  look  at  every  day  when  I  am 
writing.  Some  old  Italian  drew  her.  She  is  a 
woman  poised  with  one  foot  upon  a  rolling  wheel 
of  gold.  The  wheel  has  two  small  wings.  And 
she  is  going  —  0!  so  far!  —  and  so  happily.  But 
she  does  not  know  where,  nor  does  she  care.  She 
is  just  like  me,  you  see,  and  the  philosophy  of 
me,  which  is  a  philosophy  of  bravery  and  de- 
fiance. Perhaps  she  is  whirling  away  to  the  arms 
of  an  immortal  lover,  just  as  some  day  I  shall  be 
whirled  away  to  some  glowing  planet  in  space. 

E. 


.FTER  I  CAME  IN  FROM  WALKING 
last  night  what  do  you  suppose  I  did?  I  sat  down 
and  played  for  you.  As  if  you  could  hear!  That 
was  foolish.  I  played  for  you  Chopin's  Nocturne, 
opus  thirty-one,  for  nowhere  else  do  the  shadows 
of  sleep  fall  so  sweetly. 

A  year  ago  I  heard  an  Italian  orchestra  play 
Chopin's  "Funeral  March."  For  weeks  after  that 
I  heard  it  continually.  Waking  or  sleeping  that 
melody  was  passing  through  my  brain.  It  be- 
came an  obsession.  I  could  not  get  away  from 
it.  After  a  while  it  reverberated  in  my  heart. 
I  felt  it  attuning  my  muscles,  swaying  them  with 
the  fatal  rhythms  of  destruction.  It  made  me 
suffer.  Wherever  I  looked  I  saw  the  visible 
melody.  I  saw  it  upon  the  walls,  upon  the  sky. 
I  saw  it  fluttering  across  the  fields  written  in  a 
language  that  none  but  I  could  read.  The  wheels 
of  the  trains  and  the  motor  cars  played  it.  The 
feet  of  people  kept  time  to  it  upon  the  street. 
Then  it  stopped.  I  heard  it  no  more.  And  a 
dream  came  to  take  its  place  —  a  torturing  dream 
of  the  night. 

No  sooner  had  I  fallen  asleep  than  I  saw  myself 
dead  and  taken  to  a  morgue.  I  saw  distinctly 

96 


IN    THE    CITY  27 

the  streets  through  which  I  passed  and  the  build- 
ings that  lined  them.  I  could  draw  a  picture  of 
them  accurately.  The  undertaker's  establishment 
was  a  low,  one-storied  structure  situated  on  the 
corner,  and  behind  it  was  a  red,  brick-paven  alley. 
When  they  took  me  in,  the  owner  got  up  from  a 
little  bed  against  the  wall  where  he  had  been 
sleeping.  He  said  he  had  promised  to  see  to  me 
himself  in  order  to  make  sure  that  I  was  dead. 
They  placed  me  upon  a  projecting  slab  of  white 
marble  in  which  there  were  dull  colored  veins. 
I  thought  sadly:  Now  he  is  going  to  make  my 
veins  like  the  marble.  Then  I  smelled  the  chemi- 
cals. They  hurt  me  because  their  smell  was  bitter. 
I  thought  of  life  —  which  had  slipped  away  from 
me  now  —  and  I  recalled  the  scent  of  violets  in 
spring,  which  Petronius  said  was  sweeter  than 
the  sin-forgiving  incense  in  the  early  church.  For 
days  I  smelled  those  dreadful  chemicals,  when 
I  was  wide  awake  and  moving  about  busied  with 
my  daily  occupations.  They  suffocated  me. 
They  poisoned  my  food  so  that  I  could  not  eat. 
They  floated  over  whatever  I  drank  like  an  in- 
visible gas.  I  could  not  get  away  from  them. 
Then  spring  came,  and  summer,  and  the  dream 
vanished  not  to  return. 

E. 


I 


LIKE  THAT  NICK-NAME  YOU  GAVE 
me  —  "wood  nymph."  That  is  because  I  am  in- 
visible and  all  you  know  of  me  is  my  laughter. 
You  say  that  once  I  laughed  at  the  great  god  Pan, 
who  then  for  punishment  turned  me  into  a 
woman?  What  a  delightful  fancy!  And  you 
can  remember  all  about  it?  You  were  there  at 
the  time  peering  through  the  reeds?  I  do  not 
recall  how  you  looked  that  day.  Describe  your- 
self to  me!  Were  you  of  the  family  of  goat-footed 
Pan? 

But  what  if  time  and  the  sad  experiences  of 
living  should  make  the  nymph  a  woman?  What 
if  it  should  wrap  about  her  the  stern  garment  of 
humanity  and  stifle  her  laughter?  I  am  sure 
that  it  is  better  to  laugh  than  to  love.  What  a 
tragedy  it  would  be  for  a  wood  nymph  to  grow 
old.  Think  of  one  grown  faded,  whose  dimples 
had  turned  to  wrinkles,  and  whose  laughter 
had  lost  its  freedom  and  its  grace!  When 
women  grow  old  they  should  wear  veils  over 
their  faces  just  as  do  some  Eastern  women  in 
their  youth. 

There  was  a  saying  among  the  Greeks  like 
this:  "May  you  be  loved  but  may  you  never 
love."  They  knew  what  was  best.  And  it  was 
the  Greeks  who  discovered  the  nymphs.  E. 

28 


I 


T  IS  SUNDAY  AND  IT  IS  RAINY.    I  AM 

not  upon  the  links,  greatly  as  I  love  the  rain  and 
the  mist  upon  the  hills.  I  am  sitting  quietly  at 
home  watching  the  rain  fall. 

I  am  sure  that  in  pagan  days  the  nymphs,  in- 
stead of  growing  old,  faded  back  into  the  trees 
and  flowers  and  were  forgotten.  No  one  would 
think  of  grieving  for  them  who  knew  only  joy. 
When  they  faded  back  into  the  trees  —  so  long 
ago  —  joy  faded  with  them.  It  is  something  we 
see  only  occasionally  to-day. 

This  peculiar,  unreasoning  sadness  which  mo- 
dernite  brought  with  it  has  destroyed,  at  one  tune 
and  another,  much  beauty.  It  destroyed  the  glad, 
white  cities  of  the  Greek  world.  It  silenced  the 
songs  of  the  troubadours.  It  changed  good  old 
beef-eating,  wine-drmking  "Merrie  England"  into 
the  England  of  the  angular-faced,  grey-clad 
Puritan. 

Anatole  France  in  a  grave  and  scholarly  man- 
ner has  poked  fun  at  this  sad-visaged  morality 
in  his  Thais.  When  this  decadent  Greek  courte- 
san —  as  he  tells  the  story  —  was  the  most  fa- 
mous woman  of  pleasure  in  the  world,  and  at  the 
same  time  its  delight  and  its  rare  seduction,  a 

29 


3o        LETTERS    FROM   A    PRAIRIE    GARDEN 

monk  in  the  Thebaid  Waste  kept  thinking  of  her 
red  lips  and  likewise  of  her  soul  condemned  to 
hell.  Overpowered  by  the  thought  of  Thais,  he 
left  his  cell  and  journeyed  to  Alexandria  to  save 
her  soul. 

Here  he  pursued  her  with  his  ascetic  ideas. 
She  was  incapable  of  combating  the  logic  of 
priests.  She  left  at  length  the  luxurious  city,  and 
bare  of  feet,  accompanied  him  to  a  convent  in 
the  waste.  Upon  this  long  journey  to  the  con- 
vent, he  was  tortured  by  the  vague  and  floating 
perfumes  that  the  moving  body  of  Thais  left 
upon  the  desert  air.  When  they  reached  the  con- 
vent she  entered  it  and  took  the  vows.  There 
she  remained  until  she  died. 

Now  when  he  who  had  gone  on  to  his  own  place 
of  prayer  and  seclusion  heard  of  the  approaching 
death  of  Thais,  he  made  haste  for  the  convent. 
When  he  saw  her  dead  and  robed  for  the  grave, 
and  they  were  celebrating  her  with  honor,  and 
he  knew  that  her  soul  was  saved,  was  he  happy? 
No,  indeed!  And  he  should  have  been  happy 
should  he  not?  But  he  was  far  from  it!  He 
grieved.  He  was  beside  himself  with  rage  and 
regret  —  because  he  had  not  enjoyed  the  beauty 
of  Thais.  He  was  of  Greek  blood  —  or  else  he 
was  skilled  in  Greek  learning.  When  he  saw 
her  rigid  in  death  he  knew  —  being  a  Greek  — 
that  a  perfect  line  is  not  such  a  bad  morality. 
He  forgot  his  religion.  He  forgot  his  ascetic 


IN   THE   CITY  3l 

vows,  overcome  with  grief.  Anatole  France, 
with  his  trained  sense  of  beauty,  enjoyed  mak- 
ing that  story's  ending. 

I,  too,  have  loved  the  beauty  of  Thais.  That 
is  why  nothing  could  induce  me  to  see  her  por- 
trayed upon  a  modern  stage.  Fancy  a  woman  of 
to-day  trying  to  impersonate  Thais!  How  wrong 
would  be  her  body,  her  gestures,  and  particularly 
the  look  within  her  eyes!  She  would  be  as  un- 
satisfactory to  me  as  those  huge,  angular,  English 
women  Tadema  has  seated  among  his  Grecian 
marbles.  I  should  not  dream  of  finding  a  realiza- 
tion of  this  antique  beauty  in  seeing  either  Farrar 
or  Garden  in  the  name  part.  Farrar  has  genera- 
tions of  New  England  ancestry  and  tradition  in 
her  blood,  and  her  face  is  a  New  England  face, 
whether  she  wears  the  gems  of  Thais  or  the  man- 
tilla of  Carmen.  How  could  she  realize  a  pagan 
beauty  —  of  Greek  blood?  Garden  is  an  Irish 
woman  and  still  further  away  in  face  and  nature. 
Temper  and  audacity  can  not  supply  the  proper 
emotion  or  the  recRiisite  illusion.  Yet  what  dif- 
ference does  the  story  of  a  libretto  make?  I  go 
to  hear  the  music.  In  the  music  I  can  see  what 
I  wish.  The  libretto  is  only  a  hook  to  hang  the 
music  on.  It  is  merely  an  excuse  for  being. 
Why  should  we  care  more  about  it  than  the  hook 
some  handsome  gown  hangs  upon? 

Why  did  not  Da  Vinci  paint  her?  He  never 
saw  her  face,  you  say?  Of  course  not!  But  he 


32        LETTERS    FROM    A    PRAIRIE    GARDEN 

could  have  dreamed  it.  There  is  a  little  red 
chalk  drawing  of  his  in  the  Louvre  that  has  just 
such  wonderful  lines.  Only  in  this  drawing  the 
eyes  are  cold;  they  are  the  eyes  of  an  age  of  as- 
ceticism. But  it  has  that  meager  fineness  that 
I  know  the  face  of  Thais  had,  a  certain  sternness 
of  modeling,  such  as  I  have  seen  upon  antique 
coins. 

Sometimes  I  ruffle  the  leaves  of  Latin  writers 
looking  for  the  name  of  Thais.  I  have  a  grudge 
at  Catullus  because  he  does  not  mention  her. 
And  I  have  always  thought  that  the  soul  of  Catul- 
lus was  like  the  face  of  Thais  —  in  her  early 
youth.  Propertius  does  better.  He  mentions 
her  twice. 

"  Turba  Menandrse  fuerat  nee  Thaidos  olim 
Tanta  in  qua  populus  lusit  Erichtonius." 
To  me  this  Latin  has  an  especial  charm  because 
the  name  of  Thais  is  upon  it.    I  believe  that  the 
other  mention  of  her  in  Propertius  is  in  the  Fifth 
Elegy  of  Book  Five. 

The  books  I  enjoy  most  and  read  oftenest  are 
those  that  were  written  before  this  sad  modern 
world  had  become  a  fact.  Soon  after  dinner  last 
night  I  crawled  happily  into  bed,  there  to  read 
undisturbed  an  elegy  of  Propertius.  An  elegy 
meant  something  merry  and  promising  interest 
to  the  Roman  of  old.  We  find  in  it  as  in  a  diary 
the  incidents  and  the  indiscretions  of  his  life. 

E. 


I 


T  IS  TOO  BAD  —  I  AGREE  WITH  YOU  — 

that  we  do  our  talking  on  paper  when  the  same 
sky  hangs  over  us  and  —  for  the  moment  —  we 
call  the  same  city  home.  There  are  so  many 
things,  too,  that  I  wish  to  do  with  you!  What 
are  they,  you  ask?  Well,  —  this  is  one  of  them. 
I  wish  to  read  Heinrich  Heine  with  you,  in  Ger- 
man, his  prose.  It  is  the  finest  in  the  world  of 
the  kind,  just  as  he  was  the  world's  greatest  wit. 
Poor  naughty,  pitiful,  blasphemous  Heine!  Some 
one  asked  him  one  day  what  he  thought  God 
would  do  with  him  his  tongue  was  so  wicked. 
Like  lightning  came  the  answer:  "He  will  forgive 
me!  It  is  His  business." 

You  must  promise  not  to  read  Heine  without 
me.  How  can  that  be,  you  ask,  since  we  are 
never  to  meet?  It  may  not  be  hi  this  life!  But 
that  does  not  make  any  difference.  The  promise 
will  hold  good  just  the  same.  We  will  read  him 
together  on  some  star  in  space.  Is  not  that 
something  to  look  forward  to?  Is  not  that  worth 
not  meeting  me  here?  We  will  read  the  wonderful 
things  that  that  pitiful  heart  of  his  wrote  about 
love  on  the  planet  Venus,  some  rare  evening  of 
a  planet's  summer.  And  coasting  along  the 
canals  of  Mars  we  will  read  what  he  wrote  of  war 

33 


34        LETTERS   FROM   A   PRAIRIE   GARDEN 

and  his  description  of  the  face  of  Napoleon.  In 
that  star  which  the  Persians  call  Anahid,  because 
an  odalisque  plays  there  on  a  lute,  we  will  read 
what  he  said  of  music  and  his  story  of  the  play- 
ing of  Paganini.  And  in  some  mist-girdled 
planet,  we  will  read  his  fancies  of  the  North  Sea 
out  of  whose  frozen  fogs  he  learned  a  new  kind 
of  verse  and  became  the  first  German  poet  of  the 
sea.  I  should  like  to  read  those  memoirs  of  his 
which  —  I  believe  —  have  not  yet  been  printed. 
He  said  just  before  he  died  that  the  memoirs 
were  his  greatest  work  in  prose.  There  was  a 
report  at  the  time  of  his  death,  that  they  had 
been  sold  by  a  member  of  his  family.  They  have 
lain  buried  from  the  curious  all  these  years  in 
the  secret  archives  of  the  Imperial  Library  of 
Vienna.  The  Hohenzollerns  and  Hapsburgs  can 
get  along  well  enough  without  knowing  all  the 
scorpion  stings  he  gave  them.  He  said  once 
that  the  Germans  hoped  they  would  never  find 
any  more  Napoleon  heads  among  their  people; 
the  Hohenzollerns  have  continued  to  hope  some- 
thing similar  of  the  head  of  Heine. 

There  have  been  no  impassioned  idealists  since 
Heine,  who  have  written  as  he  wrote,  with  the 
eloquence  of  deep  conviction.  He  was  the  con- 
necting link  between  two  different  periods  of 
time  —  the  eighteenth  century  —  upon  whose 
threshold  he  stood  —  and  the  world  we  know 
where  everything  was  to  change. 


IN    THE    CITY  35 

I  have  always  been  in  love  with  Heine.  Indeed 
the  men  whom  I  have  loved  have  been  long  dead. 
Mine  have  been  loves  of  the  brain  and  of  art, 
sexless  infidelities  of  a  dreamer.  I  have  loved 
Ferdinand  La  Salle,  a  friend  of  Heine.  I  loved 
Petronius,  the  patrician,  who  declared  that  good 
in  no  wise  differs  from  evil.  I  loved  the  youthful 
Sophocles  who  danced  and  sang  for  the  returning 
victors  of  Salamis.  I  loved  Goethe  —  as  women 
have  always  loved  him  —  that  handsome,  youth- 
ful Goethe  who  posed  for  his  portrait  in  Rome 
standing  proudly  by  the  side  of  the  Apollo  Belvi- 
dere.  Now  you  can  see  how  we  are  going  to 
enjoy  ourselves  on  that  planet  in  space!  There, 
like  Orion  the  Hunter,  who  bore  the  bow  of  gold, 
you  will  hunt  down  and  make  real  all  the  old 
vain  dreams  of  the  earth.  And  there  time  will 
have  no  power  over  us,  neither  you  nor  I  will  be 
the  subjects  of  its  disenchanting  laws. 

E. 


Y, 


OU  DID  NOT  KNOW,  DID  YOU,  THAT 
I  have  ever  so  many  homes?  You  are  incredu- 
lous? You  smile  scornfully  because  you  know  I 
have  not  a  sou?  It  is  true  nevertheless!  And  I 
take  pleasure  in  journeying  from  one  to  the 
other.  I  really  can  not  see  how  people  live  who 
have  only  one  house  to  live  in.  That  is  a  sure 
evidence  of  poverty.  I  do  not  know  of  any 
millionaire  who  has  so  many  and  such  satisfac- 
tory houses  as  I. 

They  who  have  dreams,  have  nothing  else, 
you  object?  You  are  right.  I  have  found  this 
to  be  true.  I  who  can  lay  claim  to  no  larger  es- 
tate of  worldly  wealth  than  Markham  says  that 
poor  Villon  possessed  —  "The  boughs  of  a  toss- 
ing tree" — have  a  dream-estate  and  thereon  a 
home.  This  particular  home  is  a  rambling, 
colonial  farmhouse  far  to  the  north,  among  the 
New  England  mountains,  and  sufficiently  re- 
moved from  the  storm-vexed  Atlantic  to  catch 
only  occasionally  its  mists  and  fogs.  It  is  situ- 
ated upon  a  hill  of  slight  elevation  overlooking 
meadowland,  black  forests,  and  far  blue  moun- 
tains. It  is  a  primitive  farming  country.  The 
whistle  of  a  locomotive  is  not  heard  here  nor  the 

36 


IN   THE    CITY  87 

noise  of  a  street  car.  In  the  little  village,  some 
ten  miles  away,  there,  too,  is  peace  and  the  rustic 
grace  of  an  earlier  century. 

Within  my  old  red  farmhouse  there  is  little 
that  savors  of  the  modern  world.  In  the  kitchen, 
which  has  a  white,  sanded  floor,  there  are  brick 
ovens  for  baking.  In  the  other  rooms  there  are 
rough-hewn  fireplaces,  black  and  spacious.  For 
lighting  there  are  only  candles.  When  I  grow 
old  I  shall  be  like  Gautier,  who  said  that  there 
were  only  two  things  that  could  give  him  pleas- 
ure at  the  last,  and  one  was  the  light  of  candles. 
In  short,  hi  my  farmhouse  there  will  not  be 
much  that  tells  of  to-day.  On  the  bare  floor  there 
will  be  home-made  rugs.  I  shall  sleep  between 
slightly  yellowed,  home-woven  sheets  of  linen. 
In  my  library  there  will  be  only  books  of  other 
ages.  Upon  the  walls  will  hang  prints  made  by 
the  men  of  eighteenth-century  England  and 
France,  with  an  occasional  early  Dutch  etching. 
There  will  be  a  few  jars  of  undecorated  pottery 
whose  charm  will  be  their  color  and  form.  For 
the  rest  there  will  be  an  austere  bareness. 

Here  I  shall  come  for  two  months  of  the  year; 
May  and  November.  In  May  it  will  be  to  enjoy 
the  fragile,  fugitive  fairness  of  spring  far  to  the 
north.  Outside  my  old  grey  farmhouse  then  the 
fields  will  have  the  laughing,  joyous  green  we 
see  in  modern  French  art.  They  will  be  dotted 
with  daisies  so  surprisingly  white  that  they  shine 


38        LETTERS   FROM   A   PRAIRIE   GARDEN 

like  stars.  There  will  be  gold  swinging  butter- 
cups, and  gnarled  apple  trees  fantastically  flow- 
ered with  pink.  And  trailing  over  all  raveled 
fleeces  of  floating  mist,  the  ghosts  of  the  vanish- 
ing snow. 

Here  twice  a  year  I  shall  have  a  house  party 
to  keep  me  company.  In  the  spring  it  will  be 
made  up  of  frail,  beautiful,  frivolous  women,  as 
irresponsible  as  the  flowers  outside  in  the  fields. 
In  these  great  bare  rooms,  they  will  dance  merrily 
through  the  pale,  northern  nights,  dressed  in 
fragile  and  frolicsome  gowns  of  gauze,  and  they 
will  laugh  and  say  the  most  foolish  and  extrava- 
gant things  in  the  world  with  the  sweetest  of  lips. 
I  shall  lean  by  the  open  window  and  watch  them 
and  listen,  and  think  how  like  them  is  the  scent 
of  the  lilac  that  comes  in  through  the  window. 
Looking  at  them  I  shall  learn  to  love  perfect  lips 
that  are  perfectly  false  and  the  irresponsibility  of 
human  flowers  under  the  spell  of  spring.  I  shall 
learn  that  beauty  is  worth  having  at  any  price. 

And  they  will  dance  on,  these  beautiful  women, 
while  I  watch  them,  and  make  merry,  until  the 
candles  die,  and  the  stars  are  dull  dots  in  a  windy 
sky,  looking  like  their  own  crushed  dresses  of 
gauze  in  the  early  dawn.  And  as  they  drift  down 
the  great  hall  and  away  from  me,  I  shall  not 
know  nor  care  whether  they  were  really  flowers 
or  stars.  And  I  shall  stand  alone  by  the  window 
and  wait  for  something  that  never  comes.  Then 


IN   THE   CITY  89 

I  shall  look  out  upon  the  pallid  day  that  has  lost 
its  delight  and  its  stars,  and  I  shall  feel  the  winds 
that  sweep  down  over  these  northern  mountains, 
winds  that  are  lonely  and  austere. 

In  the  autumn,  in  November,  my  house  party 
will  be  of  brilliant  people,  both  men  and  women; 
musicians,  artists,  dreamers,  fantastic  carvers  of 
pictures  out  of  fleeting  words.  I  shall  have  them 
to  help  make  me  forget  for  a  moment  that  life 
is  sad  and  that  death  must  be.  And  always 
through  this  month  of  November  the  grey  rain 
will  fall,  in  fine,  sharp  lines,  looking  like  the 
background  of  an  old  wood-cut,  and  the  brilliant 
leaves  of  autumn  will  be  upon  the  ground,  the 
trees  black  and  bare;  and  in  the  distance  the 
frown  of  black  forests  and  the  delicate  blurred 
blue  of  mountains.  On  the  sloping  fields  beside 
my  dwelling  there  will  be  piles,  house  high,  of 
glowing,  golden  pumpkins,  greenish  yellow 
squashes,  and  burnished  gourds,  which  give  out 
light.  When  night  comes,  as  in  those  old  lost 
nights  of  May,  we  shall  make  merry.  There  will 
be  great  fires  burning  in  all  the  rooms,  which  keep 
the  resinous  scent  of  aromatic  woods  and  fret  the 
floor  with  shadows.  And  at  tunes  some  one, 
perhaps  some  subtle  Slav,  will  play  upon  the 
piano  feverish  and  forgotten  melodies,  or  the 
delicate  fancies  of  Scarlatti.  Then  music  will 
hold  us  with  its  spell,  and  no  one  will  speak  a 
word. 


4o       LETTERS   FROM   A   PRAIRIE   GARDEN 

Again  we  shall  dine  late  at  a  great  table  quiver- 
ing with  candles.  Brilliant,  unforgettable  things 
will  be  said,  and  we  shall  talk  wildly  and  well, 
play  with  thought,  with  words,  as  with  a  juggler's 
balls  of  iridescent  glass,  and  drink  and  drink 
and  be  happy.  Every  once  in  a  while  there  will 
be  a  pause  in  the  merriment,  as  if  overmastering 
Fate  said  "Hush!"  And  we  shall  shiver  at  the 
wail  of  the  wind,  premonition  of  the  northern 
winter,  and  hear  the  rain  beating  upon  the  pane. 
Each  one  will  feel  for  a  moment  in  his  heart,  the 
black  space  of  the  storm  outside  and  the  un- 
measured leagues  of  night.  Then  the  merriment 
will  rise  higher  and  higher.  Defiance  will  be 
heaped  on  joy.  Time  will  have  lengthened  the 
candle  flames.  Inspiration  will  come  with  a 
delirium  of  joy.  And  they  will  talk  wildly  and 
more  madly,  laugh  on  and  on,  making  believe 
bravely  that  life  is  good,  until  again  as  in  the 
old  lost  nights  of  May,  the  candles  die  and  they 
steal  away  to  sleep  a  heavy  sleep,  that  has  neither 
dreams  nor  remembrance,  to  wake  and  look  up 
at  a  sky  like  the  soft  grey  breast  of  a  wild  duck, 
a  sky  soon  to  grow  black  above  the  mountains 
and  from  which  sad  snow  straggles  down.  I 
shall  watch  them  go  away,  my  guests,  like  the 
glittering  gold  memory  of  that  dream  which  is 
life.  I  shall  be  alone  with  the  roaring  fires  and 
the  bitter  winter  that  rushes  down  over  the 
northern  hills.  E. 


I 


HAVE   MADE    A    DISCOVERY!     I   AM 

writing  to  tell  you  about  it!  The  soul  of  Hein- 
rich  Heine  dwells  in  the  purple  passion  flower; 
and  the  soul  of  Mary  of  Scotland  in  the  purple 
iris.  And  thereby  hangs  a  tale;  a  romantic  and 
fascinating  tale,  which  I  perhaps  will  write  for 
you  some  day  —  if  it  is  not  too  long  —  a  tale  of 
how,  by  what  means,  they  happened  to  reach 
the  same  color  key.  The  reason  that  I  can  not 
tell  it  to  you  now  is  because  the  bees  are  begin- 
ning to  swarm  in  my  steam  radiator,  which  sets 
me  to  thinking  of  the  meadows  of  Sicily,  and 
Theocritus,  and  Simaetha,  with  her  love-prayer 
to  the  moon.  They  are  charming  bees  (when 
they  do  not  buzz  too  noisily).  They  are  rapidly 
luring  me  away  to  a  garden  like  that  old  one 
which  men  have  said  was  situated  eastward  in 
Eden. 

But  Eden  is  anywhere,  I  suppose,  where  happi- 
ness is. 

E. 


H 


_AVE  YOU  ANY  MUSICAL  FRIENDS? 
I  do  not  mean  the  graphophone  kind.  If  you 
have  —  the  real  kind  —  I  want  you  to  have  them 
play  for  you  the  nocturnes  of  Chopin,  so  that 
you  can  tell  me  what  happens  in  their  twilights. 
They  are  the  pallid,  patient  twilights  of  a  north- 
ern land,  perpetuating  themselves  in  time  pro- 
digiously like  the  six-month  polar  day  which  they 
adjoin.  Yet  despite  their  geographical  isolation, 
there  is  sometimes  the  fragrance  of  tropic  flowers 
there,  the  spreading  leaves  of  equatorial  plants 
of  an  antique  decorativeness,  and  the  flash  of 
fine  Moorish  blades.  Sometimes  that  vari-tinted 
constellation  called  the  Southern  Cross  shines  in 
upon  them  and  the  nights  have  a  purple  black- 
ness. And  occasionally  one  hears  —  far  off  — 
the  swift  beat  of  horses'  feet,  not  horses  of  the 
north,  but  such  as  carry  white-draped  Bedouins 
across  the  deserts  of  Arabia.  Here  you  will  meet 
people  seemingly  ill  assorted  and  strange,  but  in 
whom  I  am  interested  —  and  you,  too.  You  will 
meet  —  for  instance  —  Turgenev,  that  blond 
Greek  giant,  who  wandered  —  by  accident  — 
across  the  Russian  steppe;  the  de  Goncourts, 
of  exquisite  taste;  and  Sainte-Beuve,  who  found 


IN    THE    CITY  43 

fault  with  every  one  in  conversation  and  was 
seldom  unkind  in  print.  Here  is  George  Sand, 
meditative  and  speaking  little;  Goethe,  the  god- 
like, unsympathetic  but  never  unjust.  Gautier, 
declaiming  eloquently  and  declaring  that  Heine 
is  "Apollo  with  a  touch  of  Mephistopheles " ; 
Dumas  pere,  the  titan  of  mental  power,  who 
could  write  for  a  day  and  a  night  and  a  day, 
without  sleep;  Gerard  de  Nerval  of  the  witch- 
like  moon-fancies,  and,  once  in  a  while,  Beranger. 
Here  will  come  de  Musset,  elegant  and  eloquent, 
the  adored  of  a  nation.  Here  one  will  be  subject 
to  the  unusual  combination  of  French  grace  and 
the  sad  seriousness  of  the  Slav.  Paul  Delaroche, 
lion-headed,  will  walk  gravely  through  the  grey- 
ness,  meditating  the  next  picture  he  is  to  paint, 
the  eloquent  canvas  showing  the  death  scene  of 
Mazarin,  the  while  a  crowd  of  insolent,  greedy 
courtiers  are  gambling  and  quarreling  in  the 
background,  as  the  agony  of  death  passes  over 
him. 

There  are  prophetic  and  improbable  readings 
for  the  future  of  Poland,  and  bits  of  history,  both 
personal  and  popular,  that  have  not  been  dis- 
seminated. There  are  things  well  worth  observ- 
ing here.  I  have  seen  the  beautiful  faces  of 
Polish  women  lean  toward  me  out  of  the  dimness. 
You  must  find  out  all  about  these  women  and  tell 
me  what  is  said  and  done  here,  because  I  am  dying 
of  curiosity.  This  will  be  a  collection  of  stories 


44        LETTERS    FROM    A    PRAIRIE    GARDEN 

made  just  for  me.  And  there  is  one  woman  in 
particular  who  wanders  through  all  these  twi- 
lights who  interests  me  more  than  the  others. 
I  have  met  her  many  tunes.  It  is  someone 
Chopin  knew  when  he  was  young  and  poor. 
Life  has  written  eloquently  upon  her  face.  I  am 
eager  for  you  to  see  her  and  tell  me  what  is 
written  there.  Please  make  these  stories  for  me 
on  stormy  afternoons  when  you  are  alone  and 
your  restless  paint  brush  is  idle,  and  your  room 
is  as  indistinct  with  floating  cigar  smoke  as  those 
rich,  grey  twilights  of  Poland.  But,  my  dear 
Unknown,  you  must  not  fall  in  love  with  that 
aristocratic  woman  who  wanders  in  those  splen- 
did twilights  of  Chopin.  If  you  did  I  should 
never  hear  from  you  again.  If  you  did  you  would 
forget  your  ambition  and  your  facile  brush. 
Napoleon  knew  something  about  women.  He 
had  seen  many  races.  He  said  the  Polish  women 
are  the  most  dangerous  in  the  world.  He  con- 
fessed that  he  was  afraid  of  them.  You  see  there 
is  reason  for  my  warning. 

Outside  the  twilight  the  air  is  confused  and 
noisy  with  the  throb  of  revolution,  and  the  voices 
of  an  angry  multitude  are  heard  coming  nearer 
and  nearer.  It  is  the  eve  of  important  political 
events.  But  here  it  is  quiet,  the  indestructible, 
under-the-sea  quiet  of  art.  The  revolution  waits 
without.  It  can  not  enter  here. 

My  tiger  on  the  floor  looks  disappointed  to-day. 


IN    THE    CITY  45 

He  expected  to  hear  your  voice  over  the  phone. 
We  are  good  friends,  the  tiger  and  I.  He  dreams 
silently  all  day  long  of  the  jungle.  And  I  —  I 
dream  silently  of  those  old  grey  twilights  of 
Poland  which  you  are  going  to  re-people  for  me. 

E. 


I 


.T   IS   MONDAY.     IT   IS   MORNING.      I 

am  wishing  the  top  of  this  same  morning  to  you. 

I  had  several  conversations  with  you  yesterday. 
Do  you  remember  any  of  them?  Please  do  not 
be  so  impolite  as  to  tell  me  that  you  do  not.  For 
one  thing  I  told  you  that  I  was  going  to  make 
my  will.  You  laughed  at  this  because  you  know 
I  have  not  wealth  to  will  to  any  one.  I  do  not 
think  it  was  nice  of  you  to  laugh.  Now  do  you 
remember?  I  replied  that  it  did  not  matter  in 
the  least  (being  poor)  that  I  was  going  to  have 
the  pleasure  of  making  a  will  just  the  same. 

And  all  of  my  friends  will  be  remembered. 
Although  my  pocket  may  be  guiltless  of  gold  as  a 
priest's  cup  of  pence,  I  do  not  have  the  conscious- 
ness of  being  poor.  I  do  not  believe  that  gold  is 
the  proper  substance  with  which  to  dissipate 
poverty.  It  takes  something  more  divinely  nur- 
tured. I  feel  rich;  I  feel  as  if  the  sun  that  shone 
upon  the  glad  pagan  cities  still  shone  on  me,  and 
my  heart  is  high  and  triumphant.  Since  the 
facts  of  daily  existence  are  unable  to  dispel 
the  illusion,  it  would  be  futile  for  you  to  try.  I 
manage  to  keep  it  in  face  of  the  disillusioning 
facts  of  living.  I  even  pity  people  who  are  re- 

46 


IN   THE    CITY  4? 

puted  rich  because  from  my  point  of  view  they 
are  poor.  I  have  to  restrain  myself  sometimes 
from  offering  them  an  alms  because  I  feel  so 
sorry  for  them.  And  the  gold  that  I  have,  thieves 
can  not  break  in  and  steal,  nor  can  moth  and 
rust  corrupt.  In  this  way  the  pleasure  of  posses- 
sion is  mine  unaccompanied  with  fear.  Neither 
does  any  one  envy  me,  nor  point  me  out  as  a 
miser  or  a  guilty-fingered  bond-holder  who  has 
robbed  his  brother  men.  I  shall  will  to  a  certain 
person  (whose  name  I  am  not  going  to  tell  you) 
the  joy  I  have  when  I  open  my  eyes  in  the  morn- 
ing and  see  the  skirt  of  the  day  fluted  with  light. 
To  another,  the  pleasure  I  had  when  I  was  a 
child  and  dipped  a  shining  tin  dipper  into  a 
sparkling  pail  of  freshly  drawn  spring-water, 
and  then  bent  over  to  drink,  seeing  the  while 
the  blue,  laughing  mountains  swing  around  and 
around  as  if  they  were  dancing  a  quadrille.  This 
childish  act  makes  me  feel  akin  to  the  heroes  of 
Homer.  To  some  one  else,  the  sensation  I  ex- 
perience when  I  pour  thick  yellow  cream  out  of 
an  old  buff-colored  stone-ware  pitcher,  a  sensa- 
tion richer  in  contentment  than  the  coins  of 
Croesus  could  buy. 

To  another  my  interest  in  pictures,  and  the 
collection  that  hangs  upon  the  walls  of  my  mind. 
To  another  my  pleasure  in  promenading  my  eyes 
over  the  surfaces  of  things  that  are  fine.  I  have 
a  right  to  prefer  surfaces  to  souls  if  I  wish. 


48    LETTERS  FROM  A  PRAIRIE  GARDEN 

To  some  one  else  who  is  melancholy  and  given 
to  the  blues,  the  wish  that  he  may  find  out  that 
three  blades  of  grass  and  a  yard  of  blue  sky  are 
enough  for  happiness.  To  another,  the  season 
ticket  that  lets  me  in  to  wander  at  will  across  the 
landscapes  the  tone-painters  have  displayed.  To 
another,  I  shall  wish  my  vision  into  the  hearts  of 
men.  This  may  not  be  a  particularly  pleasant 
bequest,  to  look  down  the  black  and  dizzy  heights 
in  human  hearts. 

To  another,  a  memory  that  comes  —  a  memory 
of  sitting  quiet  summer  after  summer,  in  a  lonely 
farmhouse,  in  a  great  bare  room,  with  an  old,  old 
lady  and  a  flowering  plant,  and  how  they  talked 
together  —  the  old  lady  and  the  flower  —  until 
they  found  that  they  were  just  two  friendly 
people,  who  happened  to  be  living  upon  differ- 
ent planes  of  life,  but  near  enough  so  that  they 
could  call  across  to  each  other.  My  heart  — 
perhaps  —  I  may  leave  to  you.  You  might  con- 
tinue to  find  interest  in  it.  You  might  know  what 
to  do  with  it.  Whenever  you  opened  it  to  look 
within  it  —  as  one  would  open  one  of  those 
delicate  caskets  of  Florentine  workmanship  — 
you  would  find  a  fresh  fancy,  a  fresh  caprice, 
until  after  a  time,  it  might  remind  you  of  those 
thin  silver  strings  which  the  rich  and  luxurious 
Romans  strung  across  the  windows  of  their 
Bai«an  villas  for  the  winds  from  the  sea  to  whisper 
mysteries  upon.  Is  it  so  altogether  impossible? 


IN   THE   CITY  4g 

In  this  world  of  wonders  who  shall  say  what  may 
or  may  not  be?  An  oriental  story  teller  relates 
this:  "One  among  the  lords  of  Khorasan  saw  in 
a  vision  Sultan  Mahmud  Sebuktagin,  an  hundred 
years  after  his  death,  when  his  body  had  mould- 
ered into  fragments  and  become  dust,  except  his 
eyes.  These,  as  ever,  moved  about  in  their  eye 
holes  and  darted  their  regards."  My  heart  may 
be  like  it  and  continue  to  possess  an  independent 
life  of  its  own.  In  some  way  it  may  have  ac- 
quired perpetuity. 

E. 


A 


GORGEOUS  WINTER  DAY,  MY  UN- 
known!  The  cold  snap  of  the  north  is  in  the  air. 
They  who  were  born  next  door  to  the  Pole,  like 
myself,  enjoy  the  cold.  We  like  to  battle  against 
it.  We  like  its  exhilaration. 

Whenever  the  wind  comes  whirling  from  the 
north  as  it  does  to-day,  it  recalls  that  bleak, 
rugged  country  where  I  was  born.  Winter  was 
splendid  there.  For  days  and  days  the  snow 
fell.  It  blotted  out  the  earth,  the  sun.  And 
then  winds  came  that  fought  and  screamed  like 
fiends.  I  lived  in  an  old  farmhouse  —  in  the 
mountains.  We  kept  fox  hounds  and  hunted. 
I  remember  when  supper-time  came  we  had  to 
wait  until  we  heard  the  baying  of  the  hounds, 
telling  that  the  hunters  were  on  their  way  back 
from  the  hills.  Those,  red,  long-eared  fox  hounds 
were  my  earliest  playmates. 

And  now  I  do  not  hunt  any  more.  I  can  not 
kill  anything  —  it  does  not  make  any  difference 
what  it  is.  I  wish  every  created  thing  to  have 
its  allotted  time  in  the  light.  And  then  —  how 
do  I  know  —  whom  —  what  —  I  am  killing? 
Sometimes  animals  and  birds  look  at  me  with 
a  look  that  I  seem  to  remember.  If  it  is  true  — 

5o 


IN   THE   CITY  5l 

that  wheel  of  Buddha  —  I  may  be  there  myself 
again  sometime,  struggling  to  crawl  up.  It  is 
very  confusing  —  very  strange  —  is  it  not,  this 
endless  journey  across  the  fields  of  Time? 

And,  too,  it  is  very  funny  when  souls  get  put 
into  the  wrong  bodies.  For  instance  —  a  sweetly 
grey  elf-soul,  with  a  touch  of  the  tingling  laughter 
of  old  Ireland,  into  the  body  of  a  man  who  once 
thought  of  becoming  a  clergyman.  Think  of  that, 
my  dear  Unknown!  And  when  he  went  to  make 
a  dutiful  and  churchly  call  some  fine  day,  when 
joy  was  coursing  pleasurably  through  his  veins, 
his  earthly  feet  might  carry  him  to  a  door  where 
some  one  lived  who  was  gay,  too,  with  laughter. 
Think  of  that,  my  dear  Unknown!  And  then 
a  great  roaring  snow  storm  came  up,  and  the 
afternoon  was  long.  Then  the  snow  puts  out 
the  sun  and  the  afternoon  lasts  forever. 

There  is  nothing  so  unreal  as  reality. 

E. 


HIS    IS    TO    WISH    YOU    A    MERRY 

Christmas,  and  likewise  the  good  things  of  the 
coining  year,  best  of  which  for  you,  I  suppose, 
would  be  a  satisfactory  finishing  of  the  great 
picture.  In  the  slow  distribution  of  heavy  mail 
this  will  just  about  reach  you  in  time. 

I  have  a  queer  fancy  when  this  holiday  comes. 
It  is  something  more;  it  is  almost  a  delusion. 

There  is  a  square,  white,  country-house  near 
an  old  university  town  in  the  north  where  I  went 
to  school,  where  in  fancy  I  spend  it  always.  It 
is  a  large,  hospitable  house,  set  in  a  grove  of 
beech  trees,  and  upon  a  hill.  Every  Christmas 
I  find  myself  going  here  in  a  jingling,  fur-filled 
sleigh,  across  level  miles  of  snow.  And  the  bells 
are  merry,  merry.  When  I  reach  the  house  and 
go  within,  there  are  yawning  black  fireplaces 
filled  with  logs,  and  a  host  of  relatives  and  friends 
waiting  to  greet  me.  Strangely  enough  all  the 
people  I  ever  loved  are  within,  smiling  and  un- 
changed, even  they  who  have  been  dead  for  a 
decade.  And  I  am  not  in  the  least  surprised  to 
meet  them. 

Here  I  stay  for  a  week,  the  while  a  snow  storm 
rages  without,  and  cold  wind  cries  about  the 
eaves.  I  feel  very  safe  here,  secure  from  evil,  and 

happy. 

62 


IN    THE    CITY  53 

At  Easter  I  come  again.  At  this  season  there 
are  jonquils  and  violets  about  the  base  of  the 
hill.  And  back  of  it  —  when  the  day  drops  — 
marvelous  yellow  sunsets  which  shine  across  wet, 
brown  land. 

I  can  not  tell  by  any  amount  of  thinking  why 
this  house  is  so  interwoven  with  my  thoughts, 
unless  it  is  that  I  like  things  that  do  not  change. 
That  is  why  I  like  old  cities  that  are  rich  with 
the  memories  of  generations.  Life  is  warmer, 
deeper,  richer  within  them.  In  these  old  cities, 
about  which  hover  the  atmosphere  of  centuries 
of  living,  perhaps  people  recover  in  some  degree 
some  of  the  power  of  other  lives,  inherit  some  of 
the  thoughts,  creative  impulses  of  them  who 
have  died,  and  life  becomes,  not  a  thing  unstable, 
detached,  lonely  and  cold,  but  an  active  part  of 
the  richly  colored  past.  It  is  a  fact  that  the 
older  and  more  permanent  the  race,  the  greater 
has  been  its  art. 

I  should  like  to  have  lived  always  in  one  place. 
Not  that  I  do  not  care  to  travel!  I  should  like 
to  call  one  place  home;  some  country  place  by 
preference,  where  the  fields  and  the  pond  and 
the  path  through  the  woods  would  know  me. 
There  I  should  like  to  live  through  quiet  spaces 
of  time,  with  no  more  disturbing  occurrence  than 
a  strange  plant  springing  up  in  the  fields  or  the 
too  early  flowering  of  the  orchard.  E. 


A- 


_T  THE  CONCERT  THE  OTHER  DAY  — 

which  was  good  —  I  was  tortured  by  the  fancy 
that  I  am  soon  to  lose  the  things  I  care  for,  the 
things  that  make  life  livable  for  me.  It  was  the 
effect  of  the  music  I  suppose.  And  when  they 
played  Schumann's  "Abendlied"  I  suffered. 

Suddenly  then  I  saw  a  dull,  grey  twilight  of 
north  Germany;  a  twilight  sad  and  damp  and 
lonely,  that  fell  with  a  wind,  in  whose  voice  was 
the  grief  of  the  dead.  The  wind  twined  and 
twined  about  me  like  entangling  veils.  It  smoth- 
ered my  mouth.  It  dimmed  my  eyes.  It  grew 
colder  and  bleaker.  At  length  it  began  to 
snow.  Each  flake  of  snow  pursued  me  like  a 
bodiless  soul.  And  then  I  discovered  that  each 
snow-flake  that  clung  to  my  cheek  was  a  hide- 
ous, scornful,  white  face,  whispering  to  me, 
whispering  to  me  —  things  that  I  did  not  wish 
to  hear  and  tried  to  forget  —  a  face  that  stung 
like  flame,  and  that  vanished  when  I  tried  to 
whisper  back.  When  I  turned  quickly  to  see  the 
face  once  plainly,  the  snow-flakes  faded  back 
by  sad,  colorless  gradations  to  monotonous  mist. 
The  rest  of  the  programme  I  did  not  hear. 

This  friend  of  whom  you  write,  must,  because 
of  his  Chinese  name,  be  related  to  that  King  of 

54 


IN   THE   CITY  55 

Tang  who  owns  the  twilight  palace  by  the  lake, 
and  who  wore  jade  pendants  upon  his  girdle.  I 
am  fond  of  jade.  Do  you  not  think  you  could 
get  one  of  those  pendants  for  me?  I  should  prefer 
one  that  is  the  color  of  old  Chinese  celadon,  with 
that  sweet,  soft,  soapy  surface  and  engraved  with 
the  seal  of  the  God  of  Laughter.  Ask  him,  too, 
if  he  will  lend  us  his  palace  by  the  lake.  Tell  him 
he  can  drop  in  always  over  Sunday.  I  think 
that  would  please  him  and  make  him  good 
natured,  do  not  you?  I  should  not  mind  at  all 
a  little  time  spent  with  you  in  such  sweet,  gold 
twilights  as  engulfed  the  palaces  of  Tang. 

E. 


VOICES,  MY  GOOD  UNKNOWN,  HAVE 
color,  have  they  not?  I  became  sure  of  it  by 
hearing  yours  over  the  phone  to-day.  I  know  a 
man  whose  voice  is  steel-grey  like  the  thin  edge 
of  a  scimitar,  without  a  pink  tone  in  it.  Yours 
is  rich;  red  mixed  with  purple  —  violets  and 
wine.  Throw  their  warm  light  over  me  often! 

E. 


56 


Y< 


OU  DO  NOT  NEED  TO  COMPLAIN  OF 

weather!  Are  you  not  superior  to  it?  With  your 
artist's  brush  you  can  shove  aside  our  inclement 
American  winter,  and  make  the  grapes  grow 
purple  along  some  Tuscan  wall.  You  can  bring 
back  "Autumn  in  his  car  of  gold,"  or  the  blue 
water  by  Taormina.  The  indestructible  spring  of 
the  Golden  Age  is  yours.  It  is  commonplace 
people  like  myself  who  are  subject  to  wind  and 
weather. 

E. 


57 


1  HAD  A  GREAT  ADVENTURE  YESTER- 
day!  I  wandered  in  the  twilights  of  Chopin. 
(In  Polish  they  spell  it  Sczopan,  I  think,  do  they 
not?)  And  whom  do  you  suppose  I  met,  like- 
wise wandering  there?  The  soul  of  Heinrich 
Heine.  I  have  known  for  some  years  that  if  I 
could  once  be  permitted  to  enter  at  the  right 
time  I  should  find  him.  Such  friends  as  he  and 
Chopin  could  not  be  separated  long.  Liszt  said 
that  there  was  such  a  strong  bond  of  union  and 
sympathy  between  them  that  words  were  a 
superfluity.  All  that  was  necessary  was  for  them 
to  sit  in  silence  together  in  the  same  room. 

The  soul  of  Heinrich  Heine  said  to  me:  People 
never  understood  the  peculiarity  and  the  con- 
tradictoriness  that  arose  from  my  nature  and 
my  surroundings.  That  is  why  they  misjudged 
and  blamed  me.  I  was  born,  you  see,  in  that 
ancient  dwelling  of  my  ancestors,  the  grey, 
stern,  granite  temple  of  the  Hebrew  race.  Ah! 
how  in  retrospect  I  can  see  it  now!  Its  influence 
has  been  always  upon  me.  In  it  there  were  the 
monoliths  of  immemorial  kings.  It  bordered 
upon  the  ancient  lands  of  the  Orient.  It  knew, 
too,  the  reasonless  fanaticism  of  desert  men.  Its 
worn  and  sunken  portals  were  built  in  a  time  so 
remote  that  it  may  not  be  calculated.  The  twin 
stars  that  rise  above  the  horizon  at  twilight  to 

58 


IN   THE   CITY  5g 

mark  the  beginning  of  oar  holy  days,  can  not 
remember  when  they  have  not  looked  down  upon 
it.  Around  its  walls  were  inscribed  the  laws  of 
Moses  and  the  prophets.  Ghostly,  white-draped, 
desert  figures  lifted  their  imploring  arms  for 
prayer  beside  its  walls.  But  afl  the  time  that 
I  was  there  with  my  people  whom  I  loved,  I  was 
haunted  by  a  face  —  a  face  that  they  could  not 
understand.  Nor  indeed  should  I  —  who  have 
been  called  the  scorpion-tongued  —  dare  ever  to 
tell  them;  the  face  of  a  childish  mother  with  an 
infant  in  her  arms.  And  yet  both  the  mother 
and  the  infant  were  of  our  ancient  race.  Every 
one  knows  their  pictures.  Throughout  the  mid- 
dle ages  they  painted  them,  and  they  called  the 
pictures  "4The  Madonna."  In  the  eyes  of  the 
mother  and  the  infant  I  saw  a  sweetness  which 
I  understood  and  which  was  altogether  different 
to  our  granite  race  which  taught  revenge;  an 
eye  for  an  eye  and  a  tooth  for  a  tooth. 

Yet  greatly  did  I  forr  my  people, 
Then  suddenly  I  found  that  I  was  wandering  in 
a  white,  Grecian  temple,  where,  between  graceful 
columns  of  pale  porphyry,  laughed  the  sea. 
Here  there  was  none  of  the  stern  bitterness  of 
the  old  faith.  There  was  nothing  but  joy.  There 
was  nothing  but  dance  and  song  and  laughter. 
Here  Pleasure  was  king.  Measure,  flower  crowned 
and  victorious,  and  surrounded  by  beautiful  women. 
Ah!  I  should  have  been  happy  here!  That 


60        LETTERS   FROM   A   PRAIRIE    GARDEN 

Greek  sentiment  for  beauty  —  which  did  not 
come  from  my  own  race  —  was  satisfied.  Here  a 
part  of  me  found  its  home.  The  gracious  land- 
scape of  Greece  delighted  my  eyes  —  because 
my  eyes  were  Greek  eyes.  The  faces  of  the  women 
were  flowers  fragrant  with  kisses  lifted  up  for  me 
to  enjoy.  And  the  gods  who  ruled  over  this  land 
were  gods  only  of  pleasure.  Only  now  the  infant 
had  grown  to  be  a  man,  and  the  eyes  of  that  man 
were  always  in  my  heart.  Here,  within  this  glad, 
Greek  temple,  that  I  had  longed  for  so  greatly, 
I  grew  thin  and  thin.  I  grew  white  and  white. 
No  one  could  find  out  the  reason  until  one  day 
I  happened  to  discover  it  myself.  My  heart 
was  bleeding  .  .  .  bleeding  the  red  blood  out  of 
me,  all  the  time.  And  it  was  because  of  that 
man's  eyes  that  were  in  my  heart. 

And  yet  greatly  did  I  love  my  people. 
I  wandered  on  and  on.  At  length  I  entered 
another  temple.  This  time  it  was  the  majestic 
Temple  of  the  German  Intellect.  The  first  step 
into  its  portals  was  taken  when  I  was  just  a  little 
boy.  (I  have  written  a  poem  about  this  which 
you  will  remember.  It  is  called  "Die  Wallfahrt 
nach  Kevlaar.")1  I  had  to  forsake  my  faith  to 

1  In  the  early  editions  (and  I  think  also  in  the  Gotta  Edition 
of  1885)  Heine  prints  an  explanatory  note  to  accompany  the  poem 
"Die  Wallfahrt  nach  Kevlaar,"  in  which  he  states  that  the  material 
of  this  poem  was  not  altogether  his  own.  In  this  explanation  he 
outlines  part  of  the  story  which  I  have  used  hi  this  Heinesque 
fantasy.  E.  W.  U. 


IN   THE    CITY  6l 

enter  it.  I  had  to  forswear  my  soul.  The  rules 
of  the  German  Temple  were  inexorable.  There 
was  another  little  boy  who  entered  at  the  same 
time.  He  came  and  sat  beside  me.  Always 
when  the  master  was  not  looking  he  told  me  how 
he  had  been  lame  —  so  very  lame  that  he  could 
not  walk.  Then  his  mother  took  him  to  Kevlaar 
and  had  a  waxen  foot  made  just  like  mine.  And 
this  waxen  foot  she  placed  by  the  statue  of  a 
man  made  of  marble.  And  then  the  little  boy's 
own  foot  was  healed  and  he  could  walk.  He 
promised  me  that  some  day  he  would  bring  me  a 
picture  of  that  marble  man.  One  day  he  did 
bring  the  picture.  It  was  a  picture  of  the  man 
whose  eyes  had  made  my  heart  bleed  in  that 
Grecian  temple.  We  separated  then,  and  each 
went  his  way  for  a  time  in  this  Temple  of  the 
German  Intellect.  I  forgot  the  little  boy. 
Strange  as  it  may  seem,  here  I  all  but  forgot 
the  eyes  that  had  looked  into  my  heart. 

And  yet  greatly  did  I  love  my  people. 
When  I  became  a  young  man  and  had  climbed 
up,  up,  in  this  German  Temple,  I  met  him  again. 
Again  we  sat  side  by  side  just  as  of  old.  And 
again  when  the  master  was  not  looking,  he  whis- 
pered to  me  that  his  heart  ached  and  he  wished 
that  his  good  old  mother  were  near,  to  have  a 
heart  made  out  of  wax,  and  sacrifice  it  for  him. 
And  in  this  way  his  own  heart  would  be  healed 
and  he  would  be  well  again. 


62    LETTERS  FROM  A  PRAIRIE  GARDEN 

Again  I  lost  sight  of  my  little  friend.  But  we 
were  still  both  going  on  and  on  through  the 
Temple  of  the  German  Intellect.  Years  after 
when  we  were  men  grown  and  I  had  forgotten 
all  about  him,  I  was  walking  one  afternoon  by 
the  shore  of  the  Rhine,  when  I  heard  voices  sing- 
ing the  song  of  the  pilgrimage  to  Kevlaar.  I 
looked  and  saw  a  band  of  pilgrims  coming.  Among 
them  was  my  boyhood's  friend,  but  so  changed 
now,  so  ill,  so  ill  —  and  so  white  —  leaning  upon 
the  arm  of  his  poor,  old  mother.  As  he  passed, 
he  looked  up  and  recognized  me.  But  he  was  so 
weak  he  could  not  speak.  Instead  he  made  a 
little  gesture  with  one  feeble  hand  which  I  under- 
stood, and  which  meant:  "If  I  had  only  sacri- 
ficed the  heart  of  wax  when  I  entered  that  Ger- 
man Temple  I  should  not  be  dying  now." 

The  art  of  Aubrey  Beardsley  was  first  heard 
in  the  music  of  Chopin,  and  then  read  in  the 
quatrains  of  Heine.  Is  not  Bed  Sefchen  —  the 
executioner's  daughter  —  the  proper  combination 
of  cruelty  and  strange  beauty,  for  a  pen  drawing 
by  Beardsley?  I  could  multiply  examples.  I 
like  to  think  that  the  fancies  of  Heinrich  Heine 
lived  first  in  the  twilights  of  Chopin. 

All  things  great  in  art  must  have  had  a  long 
descent.  They  must  have  flowered  humbly, 
ripened,  dropped  seed,  unseen  and  unheard,  in 
many  different  minds  before  they  made  their 
final  debut  in  the  broad  daylight  of  fame. 


IN    THE    CITY  63 

When  Heine  was  dying  he  forgot  his  proud 
boast  that  he  had  never  loved  but  two  things; 
the  beauty  of  women  and  the  French  Revolution, 
and  begged  a  friend  to  send  for  the  cantor  of  the 
neighboring  synagogue  to  come,  and  to  sing  for 
him  the  songs  of  his  childhood,  the  hoary,  desert 
songs  of  Judea.  He  exclaimed:  "Life  is  too  full 
of  suffering  to  live  without  faith!"  He  likewise 
forgot  his  political  animosities  and  dictated  in 
his  will:  "It  was  the  great  task  of  my  life  to 
work  at  a  hearty  understanding  between  France 
and  Germany." 

And  the  disease  that  killed  Heine  was  a  disease 
of  genius,  peculiar  to  overstrained  and  highly 
wrought  temperaments.  Like  Maurice  de  Guerin, 
Keats,  Dowson,  Jules  de  Goncourt,  Pushkin, 
Lermontov,  Maupassant,  Mickiewicz,  he  had 
lived  too  much,  enjoyed  too  much,  received  and 
digested  within  his  brain  too  many  ideas,  too 
many  impressions.  In  short,  he  insisted  upon 
living  the  life  of  a  god  instead  of  a  man.  Dull 
days  and  dark,  commonplace  hours  were  not  for 
him. 

The  de  Goncourt  brothers  were  in  Rome  when 
Heine  died.  When  they  heard  of  it  Edmond  de 
Goncourt  wrote:  "Henri  Heine  is  dead,  a  great 
personality  gone.  Better  had  the  vault  received 
all  the  mourners  rather  than  him  they  mourned. 
As  far  as  I  can  see  there  are  only  dwarfs  left  to 
bend  the  bow  of  Ulysses."  E. 


N, 


OW    THE    GROUND    WHERE    I    GO 

golfing  is  just  the  color  of  the  tawny  back  of  my 
tiger  on  the  floor.  It  is  pale  and  dull,  and  tinted 
like  the  desert  sand. 

He  is  glad  —  my  tiger  —  that  my  typewriter 
is  repaired  so  that  he  can  hear  me  talk  to  you 
again.  He  tells  me  messages  to  send  to  you. 
He  would  like  to  have  you  come  to  see  us.  He 
insists  he  thinks  it  is  too  bad  for  me  to  be  so 
much  alone,  and  to  continue  to  live  on  throughout 
the  years  in  places  that  do  not  know  you.  Poor 
tiger!  He  only  knew  life  in  the  jungle. 

E. 


64 


w, 


HO  EVER  HEARD  OF  CARING  FOR  A 
woman  whom  one  had  never  seen!  It  is  good 
that  there  is  something  new  under  the  sun.  You 
are  shattering  the  crystallized  wisdom  of  Solomon. 
I  have  begun  just  where  the  fateful  fable  of 
Narcissus  left  off.  ...  I  have  faded  away  to  a 
voice  that  can  not  be  resurrected  into  visible  life. 
De  hoc  sufficit! 

E. 


65 


w, 


HAT  DO  YOU  SUPPOSE  I  HAVE  BEEN 

finding  out  in  studying  old  Chinese  porcelains? 
Secrets  .  .  .  such  secrets!  Some  day  —  perhaps 
—  I  will  write  them.  I  shall  call  the  book  — 
probably  —  "What  Happens  in  China  Land." 
Do  not  think  it  will  be  an  uninteresting  book, 
because  it  will  be  about  porcelains.  Quite  the 
contrary!  It  will  lure  you  with  the  lure  of  ro- 
mance. 

There  is  a  vase  of  a  pale,  soft,  nameless  color 
belonging  to  a  porcelain  called  Ting  Yao,  made 
centuries  and  centuries  ago,  in  the  black  night  of 
forgetfulness.  Its  outlines  resemble  the  curves 
of  a  woman's  body;  not  a  Mongolian  woman, 
but  a  white,  Greek  woman.  The  decoration  upon 
it  is  almost  imperceptible,  a  sort  of  blind  impres- 
sion made  of  waving  and  wonderful  lines.  No 
one  knows  anything  about  this  decoration  except 
myself.  I  learned  it  by  looking  long  at  the  vase, 
and  then  following  back  dim  fibers  of  sensation. 

The  Chinaman  who  made  it  h'ved  by  the  Yellow 
Sea  where  sails  go  flying  like  moths'  wings  in  the 
dusk.  Here  ships  came  from  strange,  far  coun- 
tries to  trade.  He  —  an  idle  artist  —  lay  on  the 
shore  and  watched  them.  One  day  there  came  a 

66 


IN   THE    CITY  67 

ship  with  sails  of  purple  silk,  and  beneath  them 
a  woman  whose  eyes  were  the  color  of  the  tur- 
quoises that  they  find  on  the  Roof  of  the  World. 
For  days  and  weeks  he  loved  her,  her  beauty, 
with  an  artist's  incomprehensible  love.  The  sight 
of  her  set  tingling  in  his  brain  and  his  wizard 
Eastern  fingers,  the  springs  of  creative  fancy. 
And  she,  she  was  happy  enough,  beneath  the 
purple  sails  upon  the  Yellow  Sea,  and  all  uncon- 
scious of  the  slanting,  black  eyes  that  watched 
her. 

But  one  night  there  was  trouble.  There  was  a 
quarrel,  and  a  body  flung  with  passion  into  the 
sea.  At  dawn  when  the  tide  came  creeping  in, 
the  Chinaman  lay  upon  a  ledge  and  watched  it. 
And  there,  down  through  its  nameless,  yellow 
waters,  he  saw  floating  the  dead  woman  of  the 
blue  eyes.  Death  had  not  marred  her  yet,  nor 
set  upon  her  its  disfiguring  color.  She  was  the 
most  beautiful  object  he  had  seen. 

He  went  away  into  the  interior  of  China  carry- 
ing the  memory  with  him.  He  became  a  potter. 
He  made  marvelous  vases  of  a  contour  never  seen 
before  in  China.  Upon  their  surface  he  made 
magic,  wavering  lines  that  told  of  the  swaying 
of  tides;  and  beneath  these  lines,  in  a  sort  of 
blind  impression,  there  floated  something  beauti- 
ful, mysterious.  Was  it  a  flower?  Was  it  some 
moon-born  vision?  Something  beautiful-born  of 
the  sea? 


68        LETTERS    FROM    A    PRAIRIE    GARDEN 

He  made  the  surface  of  this  pottery  soft  and 
sweet  like  the  touch  of  a  woman's  cheek.  And 
he  gave  it  a  voice  —  timbre  —  like  a  sigh  of  love, 
which  he  had  heard  breathed  once  —  over  a 
sea  —  at  night. 

He  made  this  pottery  in  other  colors.  One 
was  the  blue  of  the  sky  after  the  rain,  which  was 
the  way  her  eyes  had  looked  upon  the  ship  one 
day,  humid  and  sweet  with  love.  And  he  made 
it  in  another  color;  the  green  of  a  thousand 
autumns  upon  the  hills,  which  was  his  way  of 
expressing  the  Land  of  Heart's  Desire,  where  in 
fancy,  he  had  lived  with  her.  And  he  made  it 
in  another  color  —  moon-white  —  which  was  the 
color  of  her  white,  dead  body  floating  at  dawn 
within  the  Yellow  Sea.  And  this  was  all  that 
he  ever  knew  of  love.  He  did  not  express  it  in 
music  or  poetry  or  painting.  He  made  out  of  it 
—  his  love  —  the  most  marvelous  pottery  that 
the  world  has  seen,  and  upon  its  surface  in  the 
hieroglyphics  of  the  heart  he  has  told  its  story. 

That  is  what  I  am  reading  now  on  the  vases  of 
Ting  Yao. 

E. 


I 


FANCIED  THAT  I  PASSED  YOU  ON 
the  street  to-day  —  you  whom  I  have  never  seen 
—  and  there  was  a  woman  walking  with  you,  a 
beautiful  woman. 

When  we  were  exactly  opposite  each  other,  the 
woman  looked  up  and  observed  me.  Then  she 
turned  to  you  and  inquired,  "Why  are  that 
woman's  thoughts  so  far  away?" 

Swift  as  a  swallow's  wings  your  eyes  swept  my 
face.  You  replied:  "I  think  she  is  building  a 
dream-home  for  some  one  she  loves  very  dearly 
.  .  .  in  a  far  country." 

Then  she  looked  up  into  your  eyes  in  the  pagan 
sunlight,  and  I  heard  her  laugh.  "What  is  that?" 
she  replied  indifferently* 

You  answered:  "It  is  an  ideal  place  of  the 
spirit  — which  only  few  can  find." 

E. 


I 


SAW    YOUR    SOUL    THURSDAY.      IT 

slipped  out  between  the  lines  of  your  letter.  It 
is  silver  colored  and  grey.  And  it  would  be  merry 
if  its  owner  were  not  such  a  stern  taskmaster  and 
so  ambitious. 

Your  soul  said  to  me: 

"You  understand!  No  one  should  be  forced  to 
work  all  the  time.  There  are  other  things  worth 
considering  besides  duty  and  work." 

I  will  tell  you  other  things  that  your  soul  said 
to  me  some  day  when  I  have  time  and  opportunity. 

"I  was  the  most  mischievous  of  elves  once," 
your  soul  declared  rather  regretfully.  "And  then, 
not  thinking  for  the  moment  what  I  did,  just 
for  fun,  I  slipped  into  a  priest's  body  and  there 
got  shut  in.  Imagine  if  you  can  what  that  was 
like  for  an  eh"  like  me!  He  clothed  me  in  the 
ugliest  and  gloomiest  of  clothes.  He  never  per- 
mitted me  to  dance  or  sing  or  follow  my  own  will. 
He  did  not  permit  me  to  love  pleasure  or  light  or 
laughter.  For  hours  I  kneeled  on  cold,  stone 
floors  and  repeated  prayers  which  I  did  not  com- 
prehend. Then  for  days  I  practically  went  with- 
out eating.  For  other  days  I  slept  only  a  few 
hours.  In  fact  I  did  everything  that  was  dis- 

70 


IN   THE   CITY  71 

agreeable  and  unsuited  to  me,  and  I  never  did 
anything  that  was  suited  to  me.  My  constant 
companions  were  the  things  that  I  abhorred. 
After  a  while  I  found  that  I  could  stand  it  no 
longer  so  I  played  a  shabby  trick  on  the  priest 

—  a  very  bad  trick  —  and  escaped.     The  priest 
died.    I  suppose  I  was  the  cause  of  it.    But  it 
was  not  really  murder;  it  was  merely  a  defensive 
act  of  personal  necessity.     For  some  time  after 
that  I  was  unable  to  feel  the  old  elfin  joy  that 
was  my  inheritance. 

"  Next  I  got  shut  up  in  the  body  of  a  penniless, 
dreaming  poet.  This  life  was  not  so  bad,  and  in 
some  ways  it  suited  me.  I  really  had  a  pretty 
good  time  there.  Poets,  of  course,  do  not  have 
anything  to  eat,  but  I  had  received  good  lessons 
hi  fasting  in  the  priest's  body  so  I  stood  it  better. 
Poets  are  like  orchids  and  live  on  air.  Carmina 
non  dant  panem.  The  work  the  poet  did,  too,  I 
could  appreciate.  Poetry  is  only  a  fillip  of  noth- 
ing stirred  by  a  fallen  god.  And  the  country 
of  the  poet  I  loved.  It  was  a  rich  and  varied 
wonderland.  It  would  take  a  mad  botanist  to 
describe  to  you  the  things  that  grew  there  —  all 
pleasant  enough  to  look  upon,  but  nothing  useful. 
Folly  grew  there  better  than  anything  else,  I 
should  say.  I  was  fairly  happy  in  the  poet's 
body,  because  a  poet  and  an  elf  are  alike  in  this 

—  that  they  are  never  taken  seriously. 

"  Next  I  got  shut  up  in  the  body  of  an  effete, 


72        LETTERS    FROM   A   PRAIRIE    GARDEN 

Italian  aristocrat,  a  sensualist.  That  was  a  life 
that  disturbed  and  agitated  me.  It  was  like 
living  in  a  forest  where  the  wind  roars  continu- 
ally. I  was  not  happy  at  all  there.  You  see  an 
elf  cares  only  to  touch  with  his  lips  lightly  the 
cup  of  love,  never  to  drink  deeply.  I  should 
have  enjoyed  life  more  in  the  body  of  a  beauty 
lover,  who  always  searched  for  love  but  could 
not  find  it,  because  he  found  out  in  the  end  that 
he  was  an  artist  and  not  a  lover.  It  is  a  most 
important  thing  for  a  soul  to  find  the  right  body! 
All  these  different  bodies,  you  see,  have  left  their 
marks  upon  me,"  confided  your  soul  to  me.  "And 
that  is  where  the  confusion  comes  in." 

The  reason  he  talks  so  freely  to  me  —  your 
soul  —  is  because  he  remembers  the  day  when 
I  mocked  the  great  god  Pan,  and  for  punishment 
was  turned  into  a  woman.  And  he  has  been 
following  me  ever  since  to  tell  me  the  secret  by 
means  of  which  I  can  get  turned  back.  I  am 
impatient  for  that  time  to  come.  From  what  a 
world  of  worry  and  annoyance  it  would  free  me! 
From  how  many  grown-up,  incomprehensible 
duties  for  which  I  have  neither  respect  nor  ability! 
I  hope  it  will  be  before  I  grow  older. 

He  would  like  to  run  away  with  me  —  your 
soul.  If  he  did  we  would  at  once  become  gay 
elves  again,  white,  wing-fluttering,  riotous  elves. 
One  of  the  first  places  to  which  we  would  go 
(You  will  call  it  foolish!  You  will  laugh!)  will 


IN   THE    CITY  78 

be  a  pale,  upland  pasture  by  night,  where  the 
grass  is  pale  by  day,  and  under  the  moon,  it  is 
disconcerting  silver.  We  would  go  to  an  upland 
pasture  filled  with  ghostly  mullein  stalks,  whose 
tall  flowers  are  magic  yellow  disks  filled  with  dew. 
And  here  your  soul  and  I  ...  Ah!  but  I  dare 
not  tell  you!  And  we  would  have  nights  under 
mimic  primrose  moons!  Please  do  not  scold 
your  soul  if  he  should  come  in  late  sometime  soon, 
because  he  will  be  under  the  primrose  moons,  — 
with  me.  If  you  should  scold  him  he  might  set 
off  vagabonding  again  —  and  hide  in  a  priest's 
body  —  and  then  there  is  no  sort  of  telling  when 
you  could  find  him.  And  you  must  not  try  to 
make  him  tell  you  anything  that  happens  in  the 
Land  of  the  Primrose  Moons. 

You  can  not  imagine,  my  good  Unknown,  how 
joy  flowers  in  that  magic  land!  It  flowers  like 
those  white-winged  Cupid-chains  which  Boucher 
loved  to  paint  in  that  luxurious  city  by  the  Seine, 
and  which  Watteau  wreathed  about  the  masts 
of  the  ships  which  carried  travelers  to  the  Isle 
of  Venus.  When  the  spring  wind  blows,  your 
soul  longs  for  the  primrose  moons  —  and  me. 
Under  those  mimic  moons  our  wishes  float  visi- 
bly near  us,  like  blown  cigarette  smoke,  turning 
and  twining  until  they  change  into  the  blue 
riband  love-knots  and  the  fadeless  roses  of 
Versailles. 

I  will  describe  for  you  sometime  the  adven- 


74        LETTERS    FROM    A    PRAIRIE    GARDEN 

tures  of  your  soul.  And  then  I  will  explain  what 
happened  to  your  body  when  your  soul  ran 
away.  It  left  you  in  a  more  pitiable  condition 
than  that  of  Peter  Schlemihl,  who  lost  only  his 
shadow.  In  the  meantime  I  advise  you  to  be 
very  good!  When  your  soul  is  gone  you  can  not 
find  The  Primrose  Land  —  and  me.  I  should 
not  mind  at  all  meeting  you  there  at  dusk,  when 
some  old  lost  planet  of  pleasure  swings  near 
enough  to  the  earth  again  to  throw  its  intoxicat- 
ing, rosy  light  over  us. 

E. 


UPON  THE  PLAINS 


s, 


JPRING  IS  HERE!  I  CAME  TO  MEET  IT. 
And  I  was  just  in  time.  I  found  it  had  been  wait- 
ing for  me. 

And  my  prairie  garden!  I  wish  you  could  see 
it.  You  reply  coldly  that  you  never  heard  of  a 
garden  upon  the  prairie  and  that  the  age  of  mira- 
cles has  passed.  You  tell  me  that  in  your  child- 
hood's geography  Kansas  was  represented  by  a 
sand-colored  oblong  dotted  with  black  dots 
across  which  was  printed  "The  Great  American 
Desert." 

I  agree  with  all  that.  But  in  an  older  and  a 
wiser  book  it  had  been  promised  that  the  desert 
shall  bloom  like  the  rose.  Come  and  see  for  your- 
self what  has  happened!  Kansas  has  fields  of 
yellow  grain  and  its  harvests  help  feed  the  world. 

I  know  of  course  that  a  garden  should  belong 
to  an  aristocrat  of  wealth  and  leisure.  What 
could  it  have  in  common  with  an  humble  prairie 
dweller  like  myself!  One  recalls  too  readily  other 
gardens  .  .  .  the  gardens  of  San  Marco,  where 
Lorenzo  the  Magnificent  established  a  school, 
whence  came  such  geniuses  as  Angelo  and  Dona- 
tello;  and  those  gayer  gardens  designed  for 
Lorenzo's  own  personal  pleasure  in  the  grounds 
of  Careggi.  I  recall  the  Borghese  gardens,  and 

77 


78        LETTERS    FROM    A    PRAIRIE    GARDEN 

the  nightingales,  and  that  Babylonian  wonder, 
which  was  planned  by  a  king  to  console  his 
homesick  queen  for  the  flowers  and  the  fountains 
of  Medea.  There  were  the  gardens  of  Bachtsai 
Serai  where  the  Tartar  Khan  kept  his  beautiful 
prisoners;  Pushkin  has  pictured  them,  and 
Lermontov,  and  Mickiewicz.  Some  of  the  im- 
portant moments  of  the  world  have  had  their 
beginning  in  gardens.  From  an  old  garden  of 
Greece  came  a  philosophy  that  has  almost  equalled 
Christianity  in  consoling  man  for  the  wounds  of 
life  —  and  its  briefness.  It  was  in  a  garden  of 
India,  amid  the  roses  of  the  East,  that  man 
first  learned  to  find  wisdom  in  meditation.  It 
was  in  such  a  place  that  Sheik  Sa'adi,  after  a  life- 
time of  wandering  —  through  Arabia,  India, 
Egypt  —  sat  down  at  last  to  rest  and  think,  and 
to  write  the  Gulistan,  explaining  as  he  did  so: 
"From  an  hundred  gardens  I  gathered  the  rose- 
blooms." 

In  the  golden  days  of  Rome  it  was  where 
Augustan  men  of  fashion,  like  Horace  and  Catul- 
lus, chose  to  entertain  their  friends.  There  was 
no  place  they  considered  so  distinguished  and  so 
pleasure-giving.  Ovid,  in  exile,  longed  sadly  for 
those  old,  gay  gardens  of  Rome,  from  which  in- 
discreet love  for  a  woman  of  the  Caesar's  family 
had  banished  him  forever.  It  was  in  the  gardens 
of  Versailles  that  great  ladies  and  gentlemen  met 
to  talk  and  jest,  and  to  play  elegantly  with  word 


UPON   THE   PLAINS  79 

and  phrase,  until  they  made  of  their  language  the 
most  perfect  instrument  in  existence  for  conver- 
sation. And  the  sound  of  that  language  to-day; 
Monsieur,  mademoiselle,  can  you  not  see  in  the 
words  the  gallant  bow  of  a  courtier?  Courtesy 
can  not  fade  from  the  world  as  long  as  the  French 
tongue  lasts. 

To  these  same  gardens  of  France  came  in  a 
later  day  such  artists  as  La  Touche,  Ciardi,  Ru- 
sifiol  and  Le  Sidaner,  and  poets  like  Merril  and 
Jammes,  to  gather  some  of  the  superabundant 
glory  of  the  past.  In  bleak  and  rainy  Scotland, 
the  Scotland  of  the  stern  Dissenters'  faith,  it  was 
the  luxurious  gardens  of  France  that  Mary  Stuart 
regretted  most.  Even  Voltaire,  that  scorner  of 
things  sacred  and  bitter  wit,  who  spent  his  life 
as  the  ornament  of  a  drawing  room,  makes  his 
Candide  say:  "The  best  thing  we  can  do  is  to 
cultivate  a  garden." 

Lord  Bolingbroke,  despoiled  of  titles  and  honors 
and  in  disgrace,  consoled  himself  by  making  a 
garden.  He  wrote  about  it  to  Swift:  "I  am 
in  my  own  farm.  Here  I  shoot  strong,  tenacious 
roots.  I  have  caught  hold  of  the  earth,  to  use  a 
gardener's  phrase,  and  neither  my  enemies  nor 
my  friends  will  find  it  an  easy  matter  to  trans- 
plant me  again."  Gay,  the  poet,  so  Taine  de- 
clares, was  merely  "a  gardener  at  heart,  delighted 
to  see  the  spring  arrive,  happy  to  be  able  to 
enclose  an  extra  field  in  his  garden." 


8o        LETTERS    FROM    A    PRAIRIE    GARDEN 

Ulysses  visited  a  quite  remarkable  one.  I  can 
not  recall  another  like  it.  (Seventh  Book  of  the 
Odyssey.)  Trees  grew  there  whose  fruit  never 
perished  winter  or  summer.  There  a  warm  west 
wind  blew  continually,  opening  fresh  buds  and 
ripening  fruit.  The  house  set  in  this  garden  was 
not  unworthy  attention.  The  walls  were  noble. 
The  door  posts,  the  pillars  and  the  threshold 
were  silver,  while  the  doors  themselves  were  of 
gold. 

The  Japanese  insist  that  the  word  beauty  be- 
longs so  thoroughly  to  the  gardens  of  their  is- 
lands that  we  have  no  right  to  use  the  word  until 
we  have  visited  them. 

Of  course  my  garden  is  like  none  of  these.  It 
is  just  a  small  space  of  ground  upon  the  prairie. 
But  now  blue  grass  grows  here,  and  some  old- 
fashioned  flowers,  which  memory  makes  pleasant 
to  me.  Maples  of  fair  size  surround  it,  and  occa- 
sionally birds  come. 

Should  you  see  my  unpretentious  frame  dwell- 
ing, by  the  side  of  the  sandy  road,  you  would 
naturally  wonder  that  I  take  pleasure  in  it.  But 
the  windows  of  my  dwelling  do  not  look  upon  the 
lonely  prairie,  as  you  may  imagine,  but  upon  the 
populous  universe.  From  the  windows  of  this 
dwelling  I  can  watch  the  procession  of  the  ages 
pass  me  like  a  pageant.  If  you  should  call  upon 
me  I  could  not  show  you,  to  be  sure,  a  stately 
mediaeval  garden  of  old  France,  like  that  where 


UPON    THE    PLAINS  8l 

Ronsard  dwelled.  I  could  not  point  out  to  you 
a  French  chateau  like  that  of  Perigord,  where 
Montaigne  wrote  his  cynicisms.  I  could  only 
show  you  a  little  square  of  grass  beneath  the 
maples,  where  I  idle  away  the  days,  and  where 
in  my  own  peculiar  manner,  I  pursue  that  phan- 
tom that  men  call  happiness. 

E. 


1  HERE  IS  ONE  RAGGED  ARISTOCRAT 

in  my  garden,  —  a  Spanish  dagger  (the  yucca 
plant).  She  ran  away  on  the  wild  winds  of  spring 
from  the  rainless,  cacti-dotted  deserts.  The  plant 
has  a  tower  of  white,  or  better,  ivory-hued  lilies, 
as  high  as  my  head,  surrounded  by  black-green 
leaves  so  stiff  and  glittering  they  resemble  rows 
of  swords.  And  the  lily  bells  —  though  lovely  — 
are  strong  and  of  tough  tissue  that  no  stress  of 
sun  and  wind  can  destroy.  Northern  lilies  that 
are  tall  and  lovely  have  soft  flexible  leaves  of  a 
moist  and  pleasant  green,  and  a  blossom  cup  of 
fragile  satin. 

My  Spanish  aristocrat  stands  alone  in  the 
center  of  the  garden,  haughty  and  domineering. 
I  believe  in  social  equality  even  among  flowers, 
and  I  would  dispense  with  her  gladly  if  I  could. 
She  does  not  permit  me  to  approach,* nor  to  enter 
her  charmed  circle  because  her  black  sword  points 
are  sharp  and  obtrusive.  She  lacks  sensitiveness 
and  kindness.  She  lacks  approachableness  and 
flexibility.  In  addition,  the  atmosphere  spread 
abroad  by  my  pseudo  Spanish  aristocrat  is  tragic 
and  out  of  the  emotional  range  of  my  gossipy 
little  flowers.  She  recalls  sun-baked  deserts 

82 


UPON    THE    PLAINS  83 

where  men  die  of  thirst;  rainbow-tinted  cliffs, 
and  the  frozen  forest  of  stone.  My  friendly 
little  flowers  do  not  like  her  any  better  than 
I  do.  They  are  afraid  of  her.  She  is  haughty, 
high  of  head,  and  frigidly  correct.  She  does  not 
even  permit  a  frolicsome,  impertinent  weed  to 
come  near.  An  empty  space  of  sand  encircles 
her.  I  haven't  a  flower  that  would  dare  en- 
croach for  a  brief  call. 

She  is  deservedly  unpopular  in  the  garden. 
Never  for  a  second  does  she  relax  in  dignity. 
The  flowers  do  not  like  to  chat  and  gossip  when 
she  is  within  hearing.  They  feel  that  she  looks 
down  upon  them  with  scorn.  Sometimes  in 
April  or  May,  that  old  roue,  the  South  Wind, 
who  has  deceived  generations  of  flowers,  puts  on 
his  most  smiling  manner  and  offers  to  play  for 
a  party.  The  little  foolish  flowers  lose  their  heads 
and  hearts  at  sight  of  him.  They  bow  and  smile 
and  swing  their  petticoats.  But  the  Spanish 
aristocrat  will  have  nothing  to  do  with  him.  She 
will  not  even  incline  her  head.  Throughout  the 
dance  she  ignores  him.  She  even  pretends  that 
she  does  not  hear  the  fluting  of  the  South  Wind. 
This  makes  some  of  the  flowers  angry  and  they 
turn  their  backs  on  her.  Of  course  it  would  be 
better  for  every  one  concerned,  if  she  would  make 
believe  —  once  in  a  while  —  that  she  enjoyed  the 
music  of  the  South  Wind,  when  the  other  flowers 
enjoy  it  so  much.  He  is  the  most  popular  musi- 


84        LETTERS    FROM    A    PRAIRIE    GARDEN 

cian  we  have  here  in  April.  He  has  taught  charm- 
ing dance-steps  to  the  prairie  flowers.  Under  his 
tutelage  the  Sensitive  Rose  has  become  a  verita- 
ble ballet  queen. 

Yesterday  when  the  snub-nosed  pansies  and 
those  bold,  buxom  beauties,  the  hollyhocks, 
spoke  to  her,  she  refused  to  answer.  This  caused 
such  a  feeling  of  anger  and  dissension,  that  the 
flowers  insist  that  I  reprimand  her.  So  to-night, 
on  one  of  the  sharp,  dagger  points  that  guard  her 
—  after  the  manner  of  a  French  troubadour  of 
old  —  I  am  going  to  fasten  this  message: 

Swing  a  little,  dance  a  little, 

White  Lily, 
Summer's  here,  be  not  so  frigid, 

Nor  queenly, 
Deign  to  bend  upon  the  grasses 

Thy  white  face, 
Send  not  all  thy  sweetness  skyward, 

Into  space, 
Let  thy  sister  /lowers  see  once, 

Thy  heart's  gold, 
Lady  Lily,  do  thou  hasten! 

Suns  grow  old.  E. 


I 


AM  SENDING  YOU  A  STORY  OF  SPRING 

to-day,  just  the  kind  of  a  story  that  should  come 
from  a  garden.  When  you  look  up  at  the  stars 
at  this  season  of  the  year  you  will  remember  it 
—  and  then  perhaps  you  will  think  of  me  who 
procured  for  you  some  of  the  joys  of  the  mind. 

In  India  the  Holy  there  is  an  ancient  book 
which  is  called  the  Mahabharata.  Indeed  so 
sacred  is  this  book  that  it  is  kept  among  the  gods 
in  the  two  heavens  which  are  directly  above, 
and  only  a  few  numbers  have  been  entrusted  to 
the  hands  of  men.  No  one  can  tell  how  many  of 
these  books  are  upon  the  earth,  nor  how  long  they 
will  be  permitted  to  remain  here. 

Within  the  Mahabharata  there  are  other  books, 
and  books  within  books.  In  the  beginning  of 
that  one  which  is  known  as  "The  Third  Part" 
is  another  which  is  called  "The  Book  of  the 
Forest."  Now  this  in  itself  is  a  remarkable  book, 
because  it  was  written  neither  by  the  hands  nor 
by  the  thoughts  of  men.  It  was  written  by  the 
leaves  of  the  forest.  It  is  the  heart-story,  the 
dear  memory,  the  pleasant  diary  of  the  leaves  of 
the  Indian  trees.  It  is  the  record  of  what  they 
whispered  to  each  other  in  the  silence  of  blazing 
noon-tides,  when  not  even  the  serpent  dare  slip 

85 


86        LETTERS   FROM   A   PRAIRIE   GARDEN 

abroad.  It  is  the  record  of  what  they  whispered 
softly  under  the  prodigious  splendor  of  Indian 
moons  and  stars,  and  the  velvet,  purple  mid- 
nights of  the  East. 

Just  above,  but  quite  near  this  earth  upon 
which  we  live,  there  is  a  little  unnamed  star, 
which  we  can  not  see  plainly,  because  our  eyes 
are  not  made  to  look  upon  the  dwellings  of  im- 
mortals. Upon  this  star  the  great  gods  dwell, 
Siva,  and  Vishnu  ....  The  star  moves  about 
anywhere  through  space  at  the  command  of  their 
wishes,  just  as  trees  bend  at  will  of  the  wind. 
By  the  edge  of  this  star  as  it  speeds  along  the 
sapphire  roadways  of  the  sky,  the  great  gods 
recline  at  ease,  like  a  luxurious  lady  by  the  win- 
dows of  her  limousine. 

Sometimes  God  Vishnu  commands:  "To  the 
Milky  Way!"  Then  they  go  sailing  around  those 
level  islands  that  are  made  of  silver,  scentless 
flowers.  Or  God  Ganesa  calls:  "To  the  Great 
Bear!"  And  it  is  there  they  go.  They  pull  his 
tail  to  make  him  wink  his  eyes,  and  then  the  gods 
laugh,  and  are  happy.  Or  sometimes  they  sail 
between  the  shining  claws  of  Scorpio,  or  away 
to  bathe  in  the  pink  light  of  Venus,  or  to  count 
the  moons  of  Saturn.  This  is  the  way  they  amuse 
themselves  —  the  great  gods. 

But  there  is  one  night  in  spring  when  things 
are  different  and  the  moon  does  not  shine.  Then 
there  is  an  especial  festival  upon  this  star.  It  is 


UPON    THE    PLAINS  87 

the  night  God  Siva  dances.  Now  the  hairs  of  the 
head  of  Siva  are  each  a  long  black  serpent.  First 
he  gets  up  slowly  from  his  reclining  position  by 
the  edge  of  the  sapphire  roads  and  stretches  his 
long  arms  lazily,  and  his  legs,  which  are  weary 
with  sitting.  Then  one  by  one  he  plucks  the 
serpents  of  his  hair  and  stands  each  serpent  erect 
on  his  tail  upon  the  ground.  Upon  his  head  which 
is  now  bare,  he  places  the  sickle  of  the  young 
moon,  which  gives  little  light.  When  this  is  done 
God  Siva  and  the  army  of  black  snakes  begin  to 
dance.  First,  slowly,  slowly.  The  serpents  sway 
like  a  blackened  field  of  grain,  which  the  light- 
ning has  blasted.  Then  faster,  faster  they  dance, 
taking  up  more  and  more  room  on  the  tiny  star, 
until  there  is  almost  no  place  for  the  other  gods. 
They  are  obliged  to  cling  to  the  sides  for  fear 
they  will  fall  off.  The  faster  he  moves  the  more 
difficult  does  the  dancing  become  for  God  Siva. 
Because  if  he  is  not  careful,  and  does  not  step 
lightly,  his  feet  will  crush  the  star  to  dust,  and 
then  no  longer  would  the  gods  have  a  home. 
Then  there  would  be  nothing  but  an  abyss.  And 
he  must  be  careful  about  swinging  his  arms,  or 
he  will  put  out  the  candles  of  the  stars,  and  the 
sun,  too,  which  is  on  the  other  side  of  the  earth. 
And  then  there  would  be  darkness.  And  he  must 
be  careful  where  he  looks  lest  the  light  of  his 
eyes  set  worlds  on  fire  —  the  worlds  of  gods  and 
the  worlds  of  men. 


88        LETTERS    FROM    A    PRAIRIE    GARDEN 

The  other  gods  are  angry,  and  the  God  of  War 
turns  loose  his  glittering,  eye-dotted  peacocks  of 
the  orange-circled  throats,  which  are  enemies  of 
serpents.  Across  the  star  of  the  dancing  snakes 
they  march  in  battle  array,  with  outspread  tails, 
and  erect,  angry,  splendid  crests.  With  them 
Indra  sends  his  echoing  thunder  which  the  pea- 
cocks love,  and  which  strengthens  their  hearts 
and  inspirits  them.  When  the  dancing  serpents 
hear  the  thunder  and  see  the  peacock  battle-host 
coming  nearer,  they  fall  limply  to  the  ground 
and  writhe  and  twist  with  fear.  Then  Siva  stops 
the  dance.  He  bends  and  whispers  to  them. 
At  his  word  they  turn  and  slip  away  toward  the 
God  Ganesa,  who  has  the  head  of  an  elephant. 
They  crawl  up  his  legs.  They  cover  them.  They 
swing  like  black  silken  ribbons  from  his  huge 
ears  where  they  hide,  and  the  peacocks  can  not 
find  them  to  destroy  them. 

Then  the  face  of  the  elephant-headed  Ganesa 
begins  to  be  covered  with  a  sweet  and  yellow 
honey,  and  suddenly  the  entire  expanse  of  the 
star  is  blotted  and  blurred  beneath  a  swarm  of 
golden  bees.  The  Dance-God,  Siva,  drops  wearily 
upon  his  couch  and  takes  down  from  his  brow 
the  young  moon  which  he  reaches  out  to  hang 
upon  the  sky.  The  gods  see  that  this  is  the  first, 
yellow,  languorous  moon  of  Spring.  The  hoarse- 
throated  peacocks  begin  to  call,  just  as  they  do 
on  days  of  the  early  year,  for  the  rain  to  come. 


UPON    THE    PLAINS  89 

The  thunder  echoes  louder.  The  golden  bees 
are  frightened,  and  they  leave  the  face  of  God 
Ganesa,  and  the  dripping  honey,  and  fall  down 
the  night. 

They  fall  on  and  on  through  dense,  black  leagues 
of  space,  until  they  reach  the  Earth.  We  have 
seen  them  on  windy  nights  of  Spring  and  called 
them  falling  stars.  Now  when  I  see  them  I  think 
something  different  and  I  say:  "God  Siva  is 
weary  with  dancing  and  has  lain  down  to  rest 
by  the  sapphire  roads." 

When  the  gold  bees  reach  the  Earth,  they  run 
to  the  trees  and  the  flowers.  They  run  across  the 
level  fields.  They  whisper:  "  Awake!  Awake!  .  .  . 
the  Spring  is  here!" 

The  white  water-lily  opens  her  eyes.  The  jas- 
min unfolds.  The  Kokila  —  which  is  the  Indian 
nightingale  —  begins  to  sing.  The  pink  lotus 
on  the  blue  water  spreads  open;  out  of  it  steps 
Lakschmi,  the  Goddess  of  Love,  —  and  the 
Indian  Spring  is  born.  E. 


I 


HAVE  VISITS  FROM  QUITE  A  NUMBER 

of  birds.  And  there  are  not  many  trees  in  this 
part  of  the  state  to  provide  housing  for  them. 
There  are  slender,  graceful,  grey-feathered  scissor- 
tails,  and  catbirds.  The  last  are  particularly 
talkative.  They  chatter  like  monkeys  from 
morning  till  night.  Redbirds,  which  are  vicious 
of  temper,  wild  canaries,  orioles,  blue  jays,  black- 
birds, robins,  swallows,  sparrows,  and  occasion- 
ally martins  and  mocking  birds. 

The  blue  jay,  which  in  the  north  likes  to  live 
deep  within  the  forest,  is  less  solitude-loving 
here.  He  is  sociable  and  enjoys  people,  and  really 
seems  to  take  an  interest  in  what  they  say.  He 
not  only  insists  upon  being  in  town,  but  upon 
building  his  nest  just  as  near  to  the  houses  as 
possible.  There  are  eight  or  ten  in  my  maples 
some  summers.  If  you  touch  their  nests  or  young, 
they  will  fly  at  you  and  attack  you,  just  as  fear- 
lessly as  if  you  were  a  bird  enemy.  The  redbird 
is  bad  tempered,  too.  His  one  little  phrase  of 
song  reminds  me  of  a  unique  decoration  drawn 
by  a  Japanese  painter.  In  the  early  days  when 
there  were  not  so  many  houses  the  mocking  bird 
was  a  daily  visitor.  He  was  so  talkative  he  made 

90 


UPON   THE   PLAINS  91 

up  for  lack  of  people.    I  do  not  see  them  often 
now. 

To-night  in  my  maple-shaded  yard  the  fire-flies 
are  abroad.  They  dot  the  darkness  under  the 
trees.  Soon  before  me  will  spread  that  promised 
land  which  La  Touche  always  felt  a  desire  to 
paint.  I  shall  see  white  feet  scampering  away 
into  shelter  and  shadowed  grace  of  forms.  I, 
too,  have  a  liking  for  the  things  that  are  superior 
to  reality.  I  like  to  disdain  the  dominance  of 
fact. 

While  I  sit  here  cpiietly  in  the  darkness  listen- 
ing, I  think  that  it  is  good  to  have  lived,  even 
without  wealth  and  power  and  the  glitter  of 
things  that  men  call  great,  because  always  there 
will  be  night  and  stars  and  sleep,  and  the  splen- 
dor of  white  day. 

E. 


w, 


E  HAD  A  STORM  LAST  NIGHT  — A 

tragic  and  triumphant  one.  Black  billows  were 
piled  to  the  dome  of  the  sky  until  they  looked 
like  the  wall  of  a  world.  They  were  edged  with 
an  angry,  defiant  bronze  color.  Silence  spread 
over  the  prairie  and  a  threatening  light.  This 
light  brought  the  strangest  colors  to  my  garden. 
It  was  really  for  a  moment  as  if  I  had  never  seen 
it  before. 

Then  with  a  rush  and  a  roar  the  wind  swept 
down.  It  blurred  mile-long  levels  with  indis- 
tinguishable dust.  Rain  followed.  It  was  bright 
and  cold  as  ice.  It  swept  the  grey,  prairie  grass 
into  a  white  flight  of  fear.  It  cut  splendid,  long, 
white,  slanting  lines  across  the  sky.  It  was  full 
of  joy  and  fury  and  abandon.  It  leaped  cold 
and  white  as  an  ecstatic  dancer  on  to  the  plain. 
It  both  terrified  and  gladdened  my  garden.  Nig, 
my  black  cat,  enjoyed  it  and  watched  it  with 
green,  shining  eyes. 

As  I  finish  this  letter,  writing  out  of  doors  in 
the  grape  arbor,  I  recall  —  more  or  less  appro- 
priately—  the  last  words  of  a  letter  of  Horace, 
written  from  his  Sabine  farm  to  an  absent  friend 
in  Rome:  "These  words  I  dictate  to  thee  behind 
the  mouldering  temple  of  Vacuna,  happy  in  all 
things,  save  that  thou  wast  not  with  me."  E. 

92 


A 


TRIP  ACROSS  THE  PLAINS  OF  KANSAS 
on  the  train  is  not  altogether  uninteresting.  It 
would  not  be  even  to  you  who  have  been  every- 
where and  seen  everything.  Difference  might 
serve  as  interest.  This  great,  mid-continent 
monotony  is  paintable,  too. 

There  are  flat-topped  hills,  uniform  in  size,  all 
pointing  southwestward,  toward  the  greater 
deserts  beyond.  Kansas  must  have  been  the 
bed  of  an  ocean.  Deposits  in  the  limestone  prove 
it,  and  the  natural  configurations,  which  make 
you  feel  that  you  are  performing  the  feat  of  rid- 
ing across  the  bottom  of  a  dried-up  ocean,  as 
nameless  and  forgotten  as  those  that  yawn 
blackly  toward  you  from  the  caverns  of  the  moon. 
Instead  of  fields  of  grain,  once  leagues  of  water 
swayed  here.  And  I  have  seen  these  grain  fields 
ripple  like  the  tides.  Indeed  the  land  undulates 
like  frozen  waves. 

I  like  these  vast,  lonely  levels  where  the  eye 
is  unimpeded  and  where  hindrances  are  not  so 
visible.  It  will  breed  a  race  —  some  day  —  skil- 
ful in  overcoming  obstacles,  and  devoted  to  the 
freedom  of  the  human  spirit.  T* 


HE  SKY  WAS  SO  BLUE  TO-DAY  THAT 

we  decided  to  take  a  journey  together,  you  and 
I.  I  said:  "Where  shall  we  go?" 

You  replied:  "To  find  something  as  blue  as 
the  sky." 

I  agreed  cheerfully.  We  started.  We  climbed 
up,  up  the  winding,  perilous  mountain  road  that 
leads  from  the  Persian  Gulf  to  the  high  land  of 
the  interior.  There  we  crossed  a  valley  set  on 
the  top  of  a  mountain,  until  we  approached 
another  valley  and  an  earth-walled  city  named 
Shiraz.  It  was  spring.  The  little  city  was 
buried  in  roses,  the  fabulous  pink  roses  of  Persia. 

In  order  to  make  sure  of  entering  the  city 
safely  and  without  opposition,  you  suggest  that 
we  stop  outside  the  walls  at  a  caravansary  and 
buy  clothing  in  order  to  dress  as  do  the  people 
who  dwell  there.  I  agree  with  your  plan.  It 
seems  good.  Soon  you  have  on  a  long,  flowing 
garment  tightly  wrapped  about  you,  and  a  tower- 
ing, black,  high-tilted  bonnet.  I  have  on  loose, 
silken  trousers,  a  black  veil  that  covers  me  from 
head  to  foot,  and  a  little  white  mask  over  my 
nose.  Thus  arrayed  we  set  out  for  the  city.  You 
admonish  me  scornfully:  "You  must  not  forget 

94 


UPON   THE   PLAINS  g5 

your  promise,  which  was  to  show  me  something 
that  is  as  blue  as  the  sky!" 

I  reply:  "Follow  me!  You  shall  not  be  disap- 
pointed." 

I  walk  swiftly  ahead,  turning  and  turning  around 
corners,  in  the  walled,  twisting  streets  of  Shiraz. 
There  are  other  black  phantoms  in  this  street. 

You  can  not  tell  readily  which  is  I.  You  are 
looking  so  busily  to  find  out  that  you  do  not  see 
the  city  at  all.  I  slip  up  to  you  and  whisper  in 
your  ear:  "Look  there!" 

I  point  with  my  finger.  There,  down  a  crooked 
street,  is  a  mammoth  mosque  made  out  of  a 
single  turquoise,  beside  the  austere,  ashen  moun- 
tain summits  of  Persia.  Without  and  within  it 
is  covered  with  a  wonderful  enamel  as  deeply 
rich  and  as  even  in  tone  as  a  gem. 

I  enter.  You  follow  me.  As  far  as  one  can 
see  across  its  smooth,  mosaic,  level  floor  there 
are  black  phantoms,  like  myself,  kneeling  in 
prayer.  You  hasten  to  join  the  kneeling  phan- 
toms and  you  lose  me.  When,  their  prayers 
being  ended,  they  begin  slowly  to  go  away,  you 
join  the  moving  crowd  and  try  to  find  me.  You 
walk  about  in  the  attempt  to  see  one  who  in 
some  way  suggests  me.  I  see  where  you  are  and 
I  elude  you  and  elude  you.  At  last  the  phantoms 
are  gone  —  all  but  one.  You  know  that  that  one 
must  be  I.  You  start  toward  me  and  attempt 
to  reach  me,  but  I  float  away  and  away  from  you, 


96        LETTERS   FROM   A   PRAIRIE    GARDEN 

under  the  farthest  edge  of  the  jeweled  dome. 
Still  you  follow.  Still  I  elude  you.  At  length, 
just  as  you  are  about  to  reach  me,  the  sonorous 
voice  of  a  muezzin  calls  the  prayer  of  noon: 
Allah  il  allah!  Mahmoud  rasul  allah. 

Then  you  catch  me.  You  throw  back  my 
long,  black  veil.  But  the  veil  floats  from  under 
your  hands  and  falls  limply  upon  the  mosaic 
floor  at  your  feet.  Beneath  it  you  find  nothing 
tangible,  nothing  but  a  pleasure-made  creation  of 
your  mind.  And  the  phantom  whispers:  "There 
is  another  god  beside  Allah,  and  the  name  of 
that  god  is  joy."  You  rush  with  me  out  of  the 
mosque  and  away.  You  say  that  you  can  not 
endure  longer  the  melancholy,  confining  walls 
of  the  ancient  city.  Once  outside,  where  the 
fresh  wind  comes  nimbly  and  unimpeded  from 
the  mountains,  and  the  vision  of  the  eye  is  un- 
hindered, you  find  me  again,  merry,  dressed  just 
as  of  old.  At  once  I  say  to  you:  "Look  there  I 
The  ruins  of  some  ancient  palace!" 

You  follow  with  your  eyes  my  pointing  fingers 
across  the  field  of  nodding  poppies,  and  see  them 
too.  You  say  we  must  visit  the  ruins  and  inform 
ourselves  about  them.  You  signal  to  a  man 
passing  with  saddled  mules.  We  mount  eagerly 
in  happy  anticipation,  and  a  guide  leads  the 
way  to  the  palace  of  the  tall,  slender  columns. 

It  is  a  long  ride  across  the  field  of  white  poppies. 
With  the  unaided  eye  one  can  not  estimate  dis- 


UPON   THE   PLAINS  97 

tances  in  this  shining  air  of  the  summits,  under 
this  unflecked  sky.  When  we  reach  the  ruins  of 
the  palace  and  you  have  examined  them  for  a 
while,  you  exclaim :  "  Surely,  this  was  Persepolis  I " 

I  catch  my  breath  with  surprise  and  ecstacy. 
I  had  not  thought  such  a  thing  could  be  possible. 
Persepolis!  Then  Thais  once  stood  here  and 
looked  up  at  these  same  gaunt  mountains! 

Hastily  I  dismount  and  join  you.  Together 
we  climb  the  steps,  as  hugely  outspread  as  the 
terraced  side  of  a  mountain,  and  stand  upon  the 
noble  platform  of  the  ancient  palace.  Here  we 
search  among  the  ruins  as  if  at  some  unheard 
command.  At  length  I  find  a  little  marble  box 
that  had  once  been  rimmed  with  metal,  which 
the  flames  could  not  destroy  on  that  fateful  night 
when  one  of  the  wonders  of  creation  was  burned. 
We  succeed  at  length  in  opening  it  together,  you 
and  I.  Within  there  is  a  tiny  piece  of  white 
stone  upon  which  is  chiseled  the  features  of  Thais, 
and  love  letters  written  upon  wrinkled  papyrus 
—  love  letters  written  by  a  Greek  sculptor  to 
Thais.  Ah! — such  letters  .  .  .  such  letters!  This 
sculptor,  we  learn,  was  the  friend  of  Menander, 
the  poet.  It  was  from  him  that  he  learned  to 
write  with  grace. 

You  are  lost  in  meditation.  You  forget  your 
admiration  for  the  noble  ruin  upon  which  we 
stand.  At  length  you  turn  to  me  with  the  star- 
tling question: 


98        LETTERS   FROM   A   PRAIRIE    GARDEN 

"  Do  you  suppose  we  have  found  the  reason  that 
made  her  drive  Alexander  the  Conqueror  to 
burn  this  Persian  palace?"  Of  course!  At  last 
the  secret  is  out.  She  was  homesick  for  Greece 
—  for  the  caresses  of  that  artist  lover.  (I  am 
going  to  send  to  you  in  translation  soon  the 
letters  of  this  Greek  sculptor.) 

You  see,  my  good  Unknown,  if  she  had  not 
been  real,  but  only  a  phantom  of  pleasure,  this 
destruction  would  not  have  taken  place.  It  is 
better  you  must  admit  that  they  should  remain 
invisible,  or  wear  black  veils  always  over  the 
face. 

E. 


HE  RED  ROSES  ARE  IN  BLOOM!  I 
leaned  out  of  my  window  at  sunrise  and  saw 
them.  They  are  tall  and  dark  and  haughty. 
They  are  flushed  with  pride.  They  are  clad  in 
royal  satin.  They  are  of  a  triumphant,  glorious 
red.  In  their  imperious  color  I  can  learn  to 
understand  the  passions  that  inspired  prodigious 
crimes. 

A  red  like  this  burned  upon  the  face  of  perilous 
Circe.  A  red  like  this  walled  and  draped  the 
chamber  where  Borgia,  of  the  great,  gold  hair, 
meditated  poisons  that  were  imperious  and  sub- 
tle. And  some  are  just  the  hue  of  the  wine-red 
tourmalines  of  California. 

My  roses  are  lovelier  this  morning  than  those 
fabulous  roses  of  Carthage  which  were  "so 
lusciously  yellow  and  red." 

E. 


I 


WISH  YOU  COULD  SEE  MY   GARDEN 

at  night  under  the  prairie  moon.  The  moon  is 
lovelier  here  than  in  your  pale,  northern  city.  It 
is  larger  and  yellower,  and  leans  in  a  more  friendly 
manner  toward  the  earth.  As  I  sit  here  watching 
it  rise  —  far  away  in  the  depths  of  a  bright  seren- 
ity —  I  recall  the  petulant  complaint  of  Leopardi 
(suggested  by  your  letter,  asking  me  to  tell  you 
what  I  know  of  him)  that  human  grief  can  not 
dim  its  brightness.  In  complying  with  your 
request  I  am  giving,  more  or  less  verbatim,  a 
sort  of  running  commentary  from  what  the 
critics  of  his  country  have  written  about  him. 
(No,  he  would  not  be  suitable  for  your  first  read- 
ing of  Italian.  He  is  un  pen  difficile,  and  of  a 
manner  too  coldly  chiseled.  Find  a  writer  of 
an  easier,  more  every-day  speech.) 

The  self  in  Leopardi  was  so  strong,  so  insistent, 
that  no  matter  what  his  surroundings,  he  could 
not  resist  making  the  personal  application.  Not 
in  any  work  of  the  mind  —  great  scholar  that 
he  was  —  not  even  in  the  presence  of  those  an- 
tique marbles  he  loved  and  understood,  could  he 
forget  himself  and  be  happy.  His  was  the  exact 
opposite  of  the  cultivated  mind  of  the  Orient. 

100 


UPON    THE    PLAINS  IOI 

He  had  not  learned  with  Faust,  that  the  way  to 
find  oneself,  is  first  to  lose  oneself. 

All  things  that  were  enduring  and  eternal,  and 
more  than  all,  nature,  with  her  power  of  continual 
rejuvenescence,  was  a  reproach  to  him  who  must 
suffer,  and  grow  old  and  die.  It  was  this  selfness 
that  ate  his  health  up  and  threw  a  gloom  over 
his  mind.  It  was  this  that  made  him  hate  the 
day,  and  his  fellow  men.  It  was  this  that  made 
him  the  poet  of  night,  and  waste  places,  and  the 
lonely  moon.  He  had  a  feeling  of  sympathy  for 
whatever  was  deserted  as  he  thought  that  he 
himself  was.  The  sky  fascinated  him,  because 
of  its  remoteness  from  life.  There  was  nothing 
about  it  to  suggest  a  memory  of  man  whom  he 
hated.  •  He  loved  it.  But  he  was  an  exile  from 
the  dayh'ght  world  of  normal  living.  He  was  a 
pessimist.  His  bitter  wit  and  his  pessimism  he 
did  not  enjoy,  as  did  Heine,  La  Rochefoucauld, 
and  Voltaire. 

I  can  not  blame  him  for  this  mental  disease. 
People  need  happiness  just  as  my  garden  flowers 
need  sun.  Leopardi  happened  to  dwell  where 
the  sunshine  fell  but  seldom.  For  that  reason 
he  lacked  sweetness.  The  soul  of  him  dwelled 
in  a  grey  desert  where  there  were  neither  trees 
nor  flowers.  He  never  knew  the  sun.  He  had 
that  "mental  unsoundness"  which  Macaulay  be- 
lieved was  necessary  to  the  creating  or  the  per- 
fect comprehending  of  poetry.  With  Macaulay 


102      LETTERS   FROM   A   PRAIRIE   GARDEN 

he  believed  the  modern  world  would  be  less  and 
less  able  to  write  it.  His  mind  was  like  the  deso- 
late greyness  of  dawn  before  the  sun  has  risen. 
All  his  terms  of  love  and  endearment  were  ex- 
pended upon  the  moon  and  the  night  —  the 
things  that  seemed  to  belong  least  to  life,  and 
to  man.  You  can  not  find  a  lovelier  poem  any- 
where than  his  "Hymn  of  an  Asiatic  Shepherd 
to  the  Moon." 

Another  cause  of  misery  was  his  consuming 
fear  of  death.  The  thought  of  it  held  his  mind 
with  a  relentless  fascination,  just  as  it  held  cap- 
tive the  minds  of  Poe,  Hoffman,  Gautier,  and 
Baudelaire,  Schopenhauer  and  Lenau.  His  ear- 
liest verses  bear  witness  to  this.  In  addition, 
Leopardi's  consciousness  of  the  ephemeral  nature 
of  all  conditions  of  living,  paralyzed  his  ambition, 
and  took  away  his  happiness.  His  mind  realized 
infinitude  and  vastness,  and  the  littleness  of  the 
human  animal.  He  saw  the  fact  of  death  in  all 
its  terror  of  isolation,  and  friendship  and  love 
never  enabled  him  to  soften  the  view.  He  could 
not  make  any  plan  for  life  that  would  harmonize 
with  the  fact  that  he  must  die.  The  tragic  fate 
of  man  was  always  in  his  mind. 

This  attitude  of  thought  impelled  him  to  seek 
in  literature  the  calmness  of  antique  life,  and  it 
is  one  of  the  foundations  for  the  building  up  of 
his  Greek  scholarship.  He  loved  the  calm,  white 
figures  that  peopled  the  Hellenic  world,  because 


UPON   THE   PLAINS  Io3 

they  were  so  far  away  from  the  modern  world  he 
hated.  He  was  so  sensitive,  so  delicately  tem- 
pered, that  he  had  no  interest  in  the  ordinary 
affairs  and  amusements  of  life.  He  longed  con- 
tinually for  a  beauty  that  has  passed  away  from 
the  world.  Only  the  most  ideal  and  sheltered 
living  could  have  made  him  happy.  His  untiring 
study,  his  cultivation  of  the  senses,  made  him 
able  to  appreciate  in  literature,  as  did  Winkle- 
mann  in  plastic  art,  the  work  of  the  Greeks.  In 
forming  a  literary  style  he  acquired  so  perfectly 
Greek  standards  that  he  was  not  in  sympathy 
with  the  Italians  of  his  day.  His  constant  prayer 
was:  "La  favilla  antica  rendi  allo  spirto  mio." 

It  is  difficult  to  imagine  such  mental  isolation. 
The  life  of  Leopardi  is  the  saddest  I  know.  It 
illustrates  at  its  bitterest  the  tragedy  of  loneli- 
ness. He  could  have  said  with  Cleon:  "Methinks 
I  am  the  sadder  for  these  many  weary  years  I 
bowed  my  back  which  taught  me  art." 

Intellectually  he  has  been  compared  with  Bal- 
zac's hero  in  "Peau  de  Chagrin."  The  Italian 
critic  who  made  this  comparison  writes:  "In  the 
pride  of  his  youth,  with  the  finest  scholarly 
equipment  of  any  man  in  Europe  (When  he  was 
twenty  Niebuhr  said  he  could  teach  him  nothing 
in  classical  philology)  he  dared  not  enjoy,  dared 
not  work,  dared  not  permit  his  sensitive  nerves 
the  vibrations  of  pleasure  which  he  knew  would 
not  only  shorten  his  days  but  deprive  him  of 


io4      LETTERS   FROM   A    PRAIRIE   GARDEN 

sight.  He  found  it  necessary  to  live  as  one  dead." 
His  countrymen  have  declared  that  in  imitation 
of  the  Human  Comedy,  Leopardi  should  have 
written  a  Human  Tragedy,  because  —  better  than 
any  one  else  —  he  saw  the  horrors  of  men's  souls. 
What  an  Oxford  scholar  wrote  of  the  youth  of 
Schopenhauer  is  true  of  Leopardi:  "The  lad  had 
evidently  the  uncanny,  Hamlet-like  gift  of  pene- 
trating beneath  the  calm  and  smiling  surface 
of  life.  He  can  not  help  seeing  the  skeleton  that 
is  grinning  horribly  in  the  closet.  His  is  a  kind 
of  second  sight.  .  .  .  The  illusion,  which  en- 
velopes the  living  so  that  they  pass  unseeing, 
lightly  over  the  crevasses  of  life,  and  over  its 
dreary  wastes,  is  already  pierced  for  him,  by 
sudden  glimpses  of  insight  into  the  mystery  of 
the  unseen." 

He  was  the  mental  giant  of  Italy.  He  towered 
above  his  countrymen  in  lonely  grandeur.  He 
had  no  feeling  of  kinship  with  them.  He  scorned 
their  pleasures.  He  disdained  their  standards. 
He  cared  nothing  for  the  beauty  of  women.  He 
did  not  care  for  painting  nor  for  splendidly 
colored  objects.  His  ideal  of  beauty  was  the 
Greek  ideal,  the  muscled  bodies  of  men,  bared 
for  the  games.  (See  "  Un  Vincitore  nel  Pallone.") 

In  the  realm  of  poetry  he  attained  absolute 
perfection  of  form.  His  poems  are  like  the 
marbles  he  loved,  clear  cut  and  hard.  There  is 
no  color.  His  art  is  of  line  and  weight.  The 


UPON    THE    PLAINS  lo5 

poems  he  has  left  are  as  flawless  as  Attic  marbles. 
They  are  the  naked  thought  stripped  of  adorn- 
ment. It  is  worth  the  eifort  of  learning  the 
Italian  tongue  to  read  once  such  wordcraft.  No 
other  modern  has  so  approached  the  classic 
manner.  He  reduced  thought  to  its  purest  form. 
No  one  else  has  practiced  concentration  and 
elimination  so  relentlessly. 

He  loved  Italy  and  the  Italian  language.  His 
scholarly  knowledge  has  made  richer  the  Italian 
tongue.  It  was  a  grief  that  ill  health  permitted 
him  to  do  so  little  for  the  country  that  he  loved. 
Writing  to  his  friend  and  patron  Giordano,  he 
says:  "There  are  so  many  things  to  be  done  in 
Italy  now  that  it  grieves  me  that  I  am  so  strait- 
ened and  chained  by  evil  fortune  that  I  can  do 
nothing.  .  .  .  There  is  the  lyric  to  create  (almost 
the  entire  nation,  and  the  French  in  particular, 
call  the  ode  the  sonata  of  literature)  and  many 
kinds  of  tragedy,  since  Alfieri  only  gave  us  one. 
...  In  short  the  whole  race  to  be  run,  and  I, 
who  received  from  nature  sufficient  ability  to 
reach  the  goal,  am  held  back  in  the  prison  of  ill 
fortune,  and  deprived  of  even  the  hope  of  showing 
Italy  something  of  which  she  neither  knows  nor 
dreams." 

The  names  of  his  poems  are  indicative  of  a 
peculiar  mental  detachment.  We  miss  the  happy 
exhilaration  of  a  poet  and  the  kindly,  intimate 
memory  of  little  things.  "La  Ginestra"  (the 


106      LETTERS    FROM    A    PRAIRIE    GARDEN 

flower  of  the  desert),  the  lonely  broom-plant  that 
grows  upon  the  slopes  of  Vesuvius;  "The  Night 
Song  of  an  Asiatic  Shepherd";  (This  is  a  pagan 
hymn  to  the  moon.)  "The  Solitary  Sparrow"; 
" Appressamento  della  Morte";  "L'Epistola  A 
Carlo  Pepoli"  (The  soul-struggle  of  a  man  tor- 
tured—  like  himself  —  by  thought  of  death.) 
"Amore  e  Morte";  " U Infinite;  "Vita  Solitaria." 
"Le  Ricordanze"  pictures  his  lonely  childhood. 
It  was  written  on  his  last  visit  home  and  it  is  a 
farewell  to  youth  and  to  life.  He  tells  us  how 
night  after  night  he  sat  alone  watching  for  the 
coming  of  his  beloved  moon,  and  dreaming  of  the 
time  when  he  would  be  permitted  to  cross  the 
Apennines. 

Che  dolci  sogni  mi  spiro  la  vista 
Di  quel  lontano  mar,  quei  monti  azzurri, 
Che  di  qua  scopro,  e  che  varcare  un  giorno 
lo  mi  pensava,  arcani  mondi,  arcana 
Felicita  fingendo  al  viver  mio! 

(What  sweet  dreams  the  sight  of  that  far  sea 
inspired  in  me,  and  the  azure  mountains  which 
I  could  glimpse  from  here  and  which  I  longed 
to  cross,  picturing  to  myself  mysterious  happi- 
ness beyond.) 

The  day  came  when  he  did  cross  the  mountains. 
But  he  did  not  find  anything  beyond  that  he 
wanted.  Pitiful  is  his  wandering  from  city  to 
city  in  search  of  a  momentary  respite  from  pain. 


UPON    THE    PLAINS  107 

Life  in  the  splendid  cities  of  Italy  brought  his 
frail  body  nothing  but  misery,  and  he  was  glad 
to  turn  back  at  last  toward  Recanati,  where  they 
called  him  il  gobbo  di  Leopardi  (Leopardi  the 
hunchback). 

In  almost  every  poem  that  he  has  written  there 
is  evidence  of  his  love  for  the  moon.  Beautiful 
are  these  terms  of  endearment:  silenziosa  luna, 
vergina  luna,  intatta  luna,  Candida  luna.  It  was 
fitting  that  his  noblest  poem  —  "The  Song  of  the 
Asiatic  Shepherd"  -and  likewise  that  the  last 
one  that  he  wrote,  "The  Setting  of  the  Moon," 
should  be  addressed  to  the  moon  which  he  had 
always  loved. 

Leopardi  came  at  length  to  believe  that  there 
is  nothing  worth  while.  In  the  labyrinths  of  his 
gloomy  thinking  he  lost  the  incentive  to  live. 
As  he  grew  older  the  fear  of  death  assumed  the 
proportion  of  a  mania.  It  became  a  "fixed  idea." 
His  physical  suffering  and  his  mental  terrors 
made  him  long  to  have  it  over  with.  The  saddest 
letter  in  literature  is  the  one  he  wrote  to  his 
father  from  his  cottage  on  the  slopes  of  Vesuvius 
shortly  before  he  died. 

NAPLES,  May  27,  1887 

My  dearest  Father:  ...  If  I  escape  the 

cholera  and  my  health  permits  I  shall  make 

every  possible  effort  to  see  you  before  long. 

I  am  in  haste  because  I  am  persuaded  by 


I08      LETTERS    FROM    A    PRAIRIE    GARDEN 

occurrences  which  I  have  foreseen  for  a  long 
time,  that  the  end  prescribed  by  God  to  my 
life  is  not  far  off. 

My  daily  suffering  has  become  so  great 
that  it  can  go  no  further.  I  hope  that  when 
at  last  the  frail  resistance  of  this  wretched 
body  shall  be  overcome,  I  shall  be  permitted 
to  enjoy  eternal  rest,  not  because  of  personal 
bravery  but  because  of  the  greatness  of  my 
suffering.  ...  I  hope  that  after  I  have  seen 
you  all  again  that  a  speedy  death  will  put 
an  end  to  my  misery  which  can  not  be  helped 
in  any  other  way. 

your  loving  son, 
GIACOMO 

Upon  the  fourteenth  of  the  following  month 
the  death  he  prayed  for  came  to  him. 

This  letter  was  written  by  the  greatest  classi- 
cal scholar  in  Europe  and  one  of  the  world's 
perfect  poets. 

E. 


w, 


ITH   WHAT   DISGUST   AND    DISAP- 

probation  would  my  neighbors  look  at  me,  as  I 
am  sitting  here  idly  in  my  garden,  if  they  knew 
that  I  was  dreaming  of  the  face  of  a  pagan  woman 
to  whom  virtue  was  a  thing  unessential. 

I  become  weary  of  the  stories  which  fiction 
writers  try  so  hard  to  unfold  for  me,  and  I  long 
for  the  hidden  stories  that  no  one  has  told, 
stories  that  are  hinted  at  but  never  displayed, 
intimate  stories  not  spoiled  by  the  prying  fingers 
of  the  world.  I  have  a  desire  just  now  to  know 
which  one  of  the  women  mentioned  in  the  pages 
of  Horace  was  the  one  he  loved.  Their  names 
are  pleasant  and  I  like  to  repeat  them;  Barine, 
Lalage,  Lyce,  Pyrrha,  Neara,  Cinara.  I  like  to 
think  of  their  faces,  the  crocus  and  violet  gowns 
they  wore,  their  Syrian  and  Indian  perfumes. 
Who  were  they?  What  was  their  life?  Were 
they  of  noble  birth  or  did  they  belong  to  the 
people?  What  did  they  look  like?  What  was 
the  special  charm  of  each?  What  were  their 
amusements?  What  did  they  do  during  the 
long,  unmarked  Roman  day?  All  that  is  left  of 
them  now  is  a  name  upon  the  verse  of  this  so- 
ciety poet  of  Augustus.  And  these  names  may 

109 


110      LETTERS    FROM    A    PRAIRIE    GARDEN 

have  been  fictitious,  chosen  to  conceal  the  amours 
of  great  ladies  of  Rome. 

I  have  turned  over  pages  of  prints  and  engrav- 
ings, and  wandered  through  art  galleries  look- 
ing at  faces  of  pictured  women  to  find  some 
visible  ideal  for  these  antique  beauties.  I  do  not 
see  why  Tadema  or  Coomans  could  not  have 
placed  them  among  their  marbles  instead  of  those 
flat-footed  English  women  with  their  dull  Eng- 
lish eyes. 

Horace  is  not  distinguished  by  a  particularly 
kind  feeling  toward  women.  He  knew  only  the 
women  of  pleasure  of  the  imperial  city.  Women, 
to  him,  were  of  the  same  consequence  as  flowers 
upon  the  table,  for  the  fleeting  pleasure  of  a 
moment.  He  cared  for  beauty  only  at  the  mo- 
ment of  its  flowering.  Of  a  better  love,  there  is 
not  a  hint  in  Horace.  For  friendship  —  for  which 
he  had  a  talent  —  men  satisfied  him.  They  were 
dearer  to  him.  In  addition,  his  nature  was  philo- 
sophical and  a  little  cold.  He  was  too  indolent 
to  give  himself  over  to  a  passion.  He  was  one  of 
the  last  and  perfect  examples  of  the  cultivated 
pagan.  After  his  death  only  six  years  were  to 
elapse  before  the  birth  of  Christ.  And  that  other 
similar  religion  of  the  East,  that  taught  pity  and 
kindness,  was  now  old  by  five  hundred  years, 
and  its  influence  had  not  been  felt  in  Rome. 

Horace  has  pictured  women  of  pleasure  grow- 
ing old,  but  there  is  no  pity  in  his  words.  How 


UPON    THE    PLAINS  III 

differently  Villon  wrote  of  them!  And  he,  too, 
was  of  Latin  blood.  But  life  had  dealt  differently 
with  Villon.  It  had  taken  all  the  bitterness  and 
scorn  out  of  his  heart,  until  every  thing  human 
touched  him.  In  addition,  in  Villon's  day  the 
pagan  world  was  dead,  another  cycle  of  civiliza- 
tion had  come,  and  one  that  was  prone  to  repen- 
tance and  tears.  And  Villon  did  not  write  in 
that  courtly,  cold,  chiseled  Latin,  but  in  an 
humble,  commonplace  speech  which  was  sym- 
pathetic to  life's  shabby  griefs.  His  pictures  of 
poor,  old,  faded  women  of  pleasure,  are  true,  but 
they  were  drawn  with  a  heart  that  suffered. 

Horace  tried  to  arrange  his  life  just  as  Goethe 
did,  to  procure  for  himself  the  greatest  amount 
of  leisure  and  calm.  He  was  always  more  or  less 
occupied  in  an  attempt  to  banish  disturbances. 
He  spent  his  days  in  a  sort  of  late  autumn  calm. 
Yet  when  he  grew  old  (He  died  in  the  fifties.) 
it  is  play  and  love  and  wine  that  philosophical 
Horace  regrets.  He  was  like  Thackeray  who 
thought  that  youth  was  the  only  thing  worth 
regretting  all  one's  days. 

Of  these  women,  which  one  did  indifferent 
Horace  love?  Which  one  held  his  heart?  I  like 
to  think  that  it  was  Cinara.  To  me  one  of  the 
most  fascinating  love  stories  in  the  world  is  the 
one  hinted  at  in  five  little  lines,  in  five  separate 
and  distinct  poems  of  Horace,  between  the  writ- 
ing of  which  long  intervals  of  years  intervened. 


112      LETTERS    FROM    A    PRAIRIE    GARDEN 

The  first  mention  is  in  the  first  poem  in  the 
fourth  book  of  odes.  This  poem  is  addressed 
to  Venus,  whom  he  begs  to  spare  him,  because 
"  I  am  not  as  I  was  under  the  good  reign  of  Cinara." 
He  goes  on  to  explain  that  he  is  nearing  fifty 
now  and  too  hardened  for  soft  commands.  This 
proves  that  Cinara  belonged  to  the  days  of  his 
youth,  and  that  after  her  all  things  changed.  I 
should  like  to  know  just  what  he  meant  by  the 
word  good.  Perhaps  it  was  kindhearted,  or  not 
avaricious.  He  had  probably  remembered  her 
for  more  than  a  quarter  of  a  century,  and  it  is  of 
her  he  thinks  first  in  connection  with  love  and 
its  delights,  and  youth.  Then  he  advises  Venus 
to  go  to  the  house  of  Paulus  Maximus,  who  is 
handsome  and  young,  and  rich  and  noble,  where 
she  can  be  fittingly  entertained  under  marble  and 
a  citron  dome,  near  the  Alban  lake,  and  where 
there  shall  be  music  of  the  lyre  and  the  Bere- 
cynthian  pipe.  Perhaps  it  was  in  a  palace  like 
this  where  he  first  met  and  loved  Cinara,  in  that 
vanished  youth  which  he  now  seems  to  regret. 
Paulus  Maximus  probably  recalls  to  him  his  own 
youth  and  its  passionate  pleasures.  Later  on  in 
this  same  poem  he  declares  sadly,  but  without 
bitterness:  "As  for  me  neither  youth  nor  women, 
nor  to  contend  over  the  wine  with  fresh  garlands 
on  my  temples  delights  longer."  The  ode  closes 
with  this  exclamation  to  Venus:  "I  clasp  thee  in 
my  dreams  of  night  caught  up  in  my  arms;  I 


UPON   THE   PLAINS  Il3 

clasp  thee  in  ray  dreams  of  night  flying  across 
the  Campus  Martius,  and  I  pursue  thee,  cruel 
one,  through  the  rolling  water."  Emotion  like 
this  is  rare  in  Horace. 

Horace  considered  himself  an  old  man  when 
he  was  not  fifty.  The  wasteful  pagan  world 
loved  youth  so,  that  it  thought  nothing  worth 
while  but  its  first  freshness.  And  the  dissipa- 
tion of  Roman  youths  —  in  those  last  fleeting 
years  of  the  pagan  world  —  exhausted  them  and 
made  them  old.  Juvenal  exclaims:  "While  we 
are  calling  for  wine,  women  and  garlands,  old 
age  steals  on  us  unawares." 

The  next  mention  of  Cinara  is  in  ode  thirteen 
of  the  same  book.  It  is  in  a  poem  to  Lyce,  and 
it  is  one  of  the  bitterest  he  ever  wrote.  It  makes 
him  hard  of  heart  to  think  that  Cinara  died  and 
Lyce  —  who  scorned  him  —  lived  on.  This  book 
was  written  on  the  threshold  of  old  age,  and  it  is 
evidently  with  Cinara  that  he  connects  his  mem- 
ory of  youth.  He  has  grown  old  like  Lyce,  but 
she  who  died  is  still  young  and  he  thinks  of  her 
with  a  consuming  regret.  It  is  in  a  way  his 
own  leavetaking  of  youth.  In  Carmen  XI  of 
this  book  he  exclaims:  "I  shall  never  again  love 
another  woman."  It  may  have  been  the  memory 
of  Cinara  that  impelled  him  to  write  this. 

What  was  the  age  of  Cinara  when  he  knew 
her?  Was  it  twenty,  which  Lope  de  Vega  calls 
the  age  of  enchantment  in  women?  Of  Lyce, 


Il4      LETTERS    FROM    A    PRAIRIE    GARDEN 

who  lived,  he  wrote  coarsely:  "What  have  you 
left  of  her  who  breathed  love  and  who  stole  me 
away  from  myself,  happy  next  to  Cinara?  But 
Fate  gave  few  years  to  Cinara,  intending  to  pre- 
serve Lyce  to  rival  in  years  the  aged  raven." 
Cinara  was  evidently  the  standard  by  which  he 
measured.  These  words  ring  with  a  peculiar 
hopeless  sadness,  for  which  for  him,  there  could 
be  no  amelioration. 

We  next  find  her  in  the  seventh  epistle  of  the 
first  book.  He  is  past  fifty  now.  It  is  written 
to  Maecenas,  and  we  learn  from  it  that  the  health 
of  Horace  is  not  good,  that  his  hair  is  turning, 
and  that  old  age  is  on  the  way.  He  craves  his 
powerful  patron's  pardon  for  remaining  so  long 
away.  He  declares:  "But  if  you  would  have 
me  depart  anywhere  (meaning  Rome)  you  must 
give  me  back  my  vigorous  constitution  and  the 
black  hair  of  my  narrow  forehead.  You  must 
give  me  back  again  the  power  to  babble  over  my 
wine  as  at  the  jilting  of  that  wanton  Cinara." 
Then  he  goes  on  to  unfold  a  little  story  the 
germ  of  which  is:  "I  beseech  you  by  your  genius 
to  give  me  back  my  former  life!"  Here  again 
Cinara  is  the  mainspring  of  regret. 

The  last  mention  of  her  is  in  the  fourteenth 
epistle  of  the  same  book.  It  is  written  to  his 
steward  blaming  him  for  still  longing  for  the 
old,  gay  life  which  they  had  known  in  Rome  in 
their  youth,  and  holding  himself  up  as  a  model 


UPON    THE    PLAINS  Il5 

of  renunciation,  exclaiming:  "Me  whom  fine 
garments  and  dressed  hair  adorned,  whom  you 
know  to  have  pleased  venal  Cinara  without  a 
price."  His  slave  was  his  companion  evidently 
in  the  old  days  and  knew  of  Cinara.  Who  was 
Cinara?  Was  she  a  hetaira?  She  could  not  surely 
have  belonged  to  that  lower  class  of  venal  women 
called  lupa,  who  cried  their  wares  by  the  roadway. 
If  his  slave  were  handsome,  she  might  not  have 
despised  him,  because  in  Rome  many  things 
were  possible  and  the  attitude  of  the  Greeks 
toward  love  was  not  yet  dead.  Where  did  he 
meet  her?  Where  did  he  see  her  last?  What 
was  the  cause  of  her  early  death?  How  did  it 
affect  him  at  the  time?  What  had  she  been  to 
him?  Once  he  called  her  good,  and  now  that  he 
is  old  and  weary  he  calls  her  wanton  and  venal. 
What  was  it  that  took  her  away  from  Horace? 
Was  she  a  beauty  so  renowned  that  she  attracted 
the  eyes  of  Caesar?  Was  this  the  reason  that  he 
did  not  see  her  again  and  dared  not  complain? 
Was  this  her  real  name?  If  so,  why  do  we  not 
find  it  in  other  writers  of  the  period,  if  she  were 
a  hetaira  famous  for  beauty? 

Sometimes  when  I  walk  up  and  down  my 
garden  ways  in  the  early  evening,  and  the  wind 
ruffles  the  blossoms  like  petticoats  of  silk,  I  fancy 
I  catch  a  glimpse  of  her.  Now,  of  course,  she 
dwells  with  the  flowers.  In  her  brief  girlhood 
she  used  to  queen  it  royally  with  them,  especially 


Il6      LETTERS    FROM    A    PRAIRIE    GARDEN 

on  the  first  of  April,  when  began  the  great  festi- 
val in  honor  of  Venus,  in  one  of  those  luxurious 
villas  of  Baiae  which  were  built  for  love  alone. 

Thus  it  is  that  I  dream  of  the  face  of  a  pagan 
woman  to  whom  virtue  was  a  thing  unessential. 
Pagan  women  should  have  been  painted  as  the 
Japanese  paint  flowers,  without  a  soul  —  truth- 
fully —  but  impersonally.  It  is  a  pity  that  there 
is  not  one  whose  face  remains  to-day!  I  wish 
that  Pausias  could  have  painted  her  as  he  did  the 
mistress  of  Lucullus  and  that  the  picture  had 
been  preserved  for  me.  I  should  like  once  to 
look  into  eyes  in  which  there  was  no  conscious- 
ness of  grief,  eyes  that  had  not  known  fear,  nor 
modern  complexities. 

It  has  been  said  that  a  dream  is  greater  than 
reality  because  its  forms  are  infinite.  I  have 
had  my  dream  of  Cinara.  It  gives  me  pleasure 
to  think  of  her  dancing  for  Horace.  And  when 
she  did,  it  made  him  think  of  fields  of  yellow 
spring  flowers  and  swaying  buttercups.  It  brought 
back  the  breath  of  the  fields.  There  was  some- 
thing about  her  that  was  detached  and  imper- 
sonal, that  neither  love  nor  dissipation  could 
hold.  It  pleased  him  then,  in  the  fervor  of  his 
youth,  to  take  her  away  from  her  humble  sur- 
roundings, to  some  splendid  villa  —  lent  him, 
perhaps,  by  Maecenas  —  and  there  set  her  beauty 
fittingly.  There,  under  his  direction,  nimble- 
fingered  tiring  women  dressed  her,  now  in  East- 


UPON   THE    PLAINS  II? 

ern  gauzes,  now  breasted  and  buskined  with  gems, 
but  still  she  seemed  cold  and  remote.  Even  at 
the  feasts  when  she  was  crowned  with  the  lapis 
that  duph'cated  her  eyes  and  the  penciled  skill 
of  art  had  been  expended  upon  her,  she  was  still 
an  alien  among  them.  He  was  the  ornament  of 
that  epoch-making  court  of  Augustus  and  yet 
Cinara  did  not  feel  flattered  by  his  favor.  Per- 
haps he  knew  that  never  once  did  his  presence 
deepen  the  midnight  of  hey  eyes. 

Was  she  pointed  out  as  she  passed  along  the 
streets  of  the  imperial  city,  in  a  silk-curtained 
litter,  as  the  love  of  Horace  ?  Was  this  something 
to  be  proud  of  which  Cinara  could  not  appreciate? 
Or  did  she  love  some  one  else,  some  one  who  was 
altogether  different,  who  knew  nothing  of  art 
and  letters,  of  fair  speaking,  and  fine  and  fastidi- 
ous distinctions,  some  muscled  gladiator,  some 
soldier  returned  from  the  battle  of  Philippi,  who 
had  nothing  to  recommend  him  but  love  and  his 
muscular  arms?  Was  it  of  such  an  one  that  she 
dreamed  at  the  feasts  ?  Did  impassioned  exquisites 
say  wonderful  things  to  her  as  they  reclined  be- 
side her  at  the  banquet?  As  they  drank  her  health 
from  an  amber  Sidonian  glass  studded  with  gems, 
did  they  weave  impromptu  fancies  about  the 
deep  blue  of  her  eyes  and  about  her  hair?  And 
did  the  others  forget  then  their  jesting,  and  listen 
to  the  fragile  carving  of  the  ivory  Latin  with  a 
fine  understanding  of  its  value,  and  a  wistful, 


Il8      LETTERS    FROM    A    PRAIRIE    GARDEN 

fleeting  premonition  that  the  end  of  this  care- 
free, pagan  world  was  not  far  away?  And  did 
they  say  how  much  more  important  the  manner 
of  saying  a  thing  is,  than  the  thing  said?  And 
did  some  one  suggest  that  words  are  gems,  and 
that  their  sound  can  give  strange  sensations? 
And  Cinara?  She  was  bored  and  wearied  with 
all  this.  She  dreamed  the  while  of  the  kisses  of 
some  one  else,  who  knew  nothing  of  things  like 
this,  and  of  arms  that  were  warm  and  strong. 

Although  Cinara  had  lived  but  few  years  and 
was  fair  haired  and  slender,  she  could  not  have 
served  as  a  model  for  a  Flemish  madonna  nor  a 
mediaeval  virgin.  The  atmosphere  of  other  cen- 
turies was  upon  her.  There  was  a  look  in  her 
eyes  that  the  world  of  to-day  does  not  know. 
Her  hands  were  as  lovely  as  Anne  of  Austria's, 
but  they  were  pagan  hands.  They  had  not  been 
taught  the  attitudes  of  prayer.  Instead,  they 
had  tossed  white  doves  and  roses  to  the  fanes  of 
Aphrodite. 

Perhaps  instead  of  the  Horace  we  know,  the 
somewhat  cold,  court  poet  of  Augustan  Rome, 
there  was  a  Horace  we  see  less  frequently,  a  lyric 
poet,  who  consumed  his  genius  in  vain  dreams  in 
presence  of  the  baffling  beauty  of  Cinara,  and 
who  knew  he  could  never  pen  upon  the  papyrus 
the  impassioned  words  he  said  to  her. 

E. 


A, 


.FTER  ALL  THAT  I  HAVE  WRITTEN 

spring  does  not  come  so  sweetly  to  the  southern 
prairie.  We  really  have  no  spring.  The  bright, 
glittering  winter  is  to-day,  and  summer  to-mor- 
row. In  one  night  of  magic  the  prairie  is  green. 
Upon  it  blossom  strange  flowers  that  I  do  not 
know.  Wild  plum  and  grape  scent  the  air. 
Locust  and  catalpa  trees  turn  white.  Violets 
are  blue  beneath  the  scanty  trees  that  border  the 
rivers.  Strange  birds  come  back  to  timbered 
places.  As  snow  melts  in  the  Rockies,  rivers  are 
swollen  to  flood  mark.  Upon  the  yellow  earth 
beside  them  lie  sluggish  bull-snakes  three  or  four 
feet  in  length.  There  are  miles  of  blossoming 
peach  orchards  of  a  marvelous  pink,  across  which 
the  south  wind  conies.  But  it  is  not  so  lovely 
as  the  misty  spring  of  the  north  and  the  gaunt 
mountains  that  smoke  with  snow. 

With  spring  the  Indians  come  from  the  reserva- 
tions to  trade.  The  roads  are  black  with  proces- 
sions of  prairie  schooners,  from  which  peer  weary, 
hard-featured  faces  that  can  not  be  glad  with 
spring.  Buck  Indians  go  by  in  numbers,  driv- 
ing wild  ponies  for  sale.  Sometimes  when  I 
awake  in  the  morning,  I  see  an  Indian's  painted 
face  pressed  against  the  pane.  E. 

ug 


s. 


IUMMER  FALLS  FIERCELY  HOT. 
There  is  little  rain.  The  air  is  yellow.  The 
earth  is  yellow.  The  prairie  loses  its  green. 
And  always  a  bright,  hot  wind  sweeps  past  from 
the  south,  a  wind  that  glitters  like  steel. 

In  the  evening  we  ride  out  upon  the  prairie, 
which  resembles  a  black,  lustreless  ocean  under 
the  night.  Far  out  upon  it,  we  stop  our  horses, 
and  throw  our  heads  back  with  delight,  to  enjoy 
the  vast,  unknown,  black  silences  beyond.  Al- 
ways here  there  is  a  certain  exhilaration,  an  at- 
mosphere of  youth  and  of  triumph  that  makes 
undesirable  things  seem  temporarily  distant.  I 
am  enchanted  by  the  beauty  of  the  prairie  nights. 
I  lie  awake  to  watch  their  changing  phases;  dew- 
less  — glittering. 

The  blistering  day,  too,  is  a  thing  of  beauty, 
despite  the  corn  that  is  shriveling  and  the  cattle 
crazy  with  thirst.  The  ground  in  the  orchards  is 
covered  with  bursting  yellow  peaches  showing 
hearts  like  suns. 

After  a  payment  on  the  ranches,  the  cow-boys 
come  to  town  to  amuse  themselves.  At  night 
they  dance  outside  the  saloons,  —  riotously  —  the 
awkward  dances  of  the  plains,  with  half-breed 


UPON    THE   PLAINS  121 

women,  who  wear  their  black  braids  tied  under 
their  chins,  with  prostitutes,  with  wind-browned 
creatures  who  cook  upon  the  great  ranches. 
Three-fingered  Jack  plays  the  fiddle,  and  Monte 
Tom  calls  off  the  figures.  The  cow-boys  dance 
with  their  hats  on  and  jingling  spurs.  They 
have  hard,  sharp  features  and  the  tiny  waists 
of  women.  When  they  ride  away  at  dawn  toward 
the  ranches,  it  is  with  bestial  cries  and  the  dis- 
charge of  revolvers  into  the  empty  air.  In  the 
cool  shade  of  a  building  almost  any  afternoon 
you  can  see  a  group  of  half  naked  Indians  gamb- 
ling at  monte,  all  squatting  upon  the  ground.  The 
hands  in  which  they  twirl  the  cards  are  finely 
shaped  and  slender.  Beside  them  are  broken, 
gorgeously  colored  melons,  with  rows  of  black, 
shining  seeds. 

E. 


ONE 


I  AFTERNOON  WHILE  I  WAS  SITTING 

comfortably  under  the  maples,  shots  flew  over 
my  head.  A  man  came  running  in  through  the 
alley  and  fell  not  far  away.  A  cot  was  brought 
from  the  house.  The  man  died  upon  it.  While 
he  was  dying  a  little  woman  in  fluted  silk  and 
white  lace  ruffles  came  and  stood  beside  him.  I 
can  not  forget  how  sweetly  blue  her  eyes  were 
—  like  gems.  It  was  because  of  her  that  the  man 
had  been  killed.  When  she  went  away  again  I 
noticed  that  little  ropes  of  blood  swung  from 
the  white  lace  ruffles  at  her  wrists.  But  her  eyes 
were  just  as  happy  and  as  sweetly  blue  as  before. 
Gems,  of  course,  can  not  grieve. 

The  dead  man  they  buried  upon  the  prairie 
where  one  is  forgotten  like  a  pebble  dropped  into 
the  sea.  The  man  who  killed  him  went  to  prison 
for  a  week  or  two.  The  little  woman  in  fresh 
silks  and  laces  fluttered  on  to  another  border 
town,  and  fresh  conquests.  Was  not  that  better 
than  to  die?  Life  has  possibilities.  Death  has 
none. 

Nothing  lasts  long  upon  the  plains.  Drouths, 
prairie  fires,  Indian  uprisings,  deaths,  pass  into 
the  realm  of  things  inconsequential  in  a  way  that 
would  amaze  an  easterner. 

133 


UPON   THE   PLAINS  128 

On  this  dry,  grass  table-land,  which  is  Kansas 
—  the  pedestal  upon  which  the  Rockies  are 
placed  —  across  which  tirelessly  nerve-racking 
winds  sweep,  the  people  have  a  certain  mental 
exhilaration  that  is  common  to  no  other  locality. 
The  dry,  intense  light  of  the  high  plains  affects 
the  nerves  through  the  eyes,  causing  a  peculiar, 
distorting  optimism.  No  one  who  lives  here 
long  escapes  it.  The  penniless  wanderer  feels  it 
quite  as  much  as  the  prospective  millionaire. 
(All  people  here  are  prospective  millionaires.) 
They  are  literally  drunk  on  air.  Before  their 
minds  floats  the  mirage  of  a  rose-colored  future 
that  annihilates  poverty  and  the  present.  Even 
old  people  know  it,  too,  this  vision  couleur  de  rose. 
Since  people,  like  plants,  are  at  mercy  of  the  soil, 
it  is  the  primal  cause  of  the  Kansan's  extrava- 
gances. It  accelerates  life.  It  makes  corn,  cab- 
bages, and  cranks  grow  equally  well. 

E. 


I 


LOVE  THE  LEAVES.  I  NOTICED  FOR 
the  first  time  to-day  how  the  light  that  falls  upon 
them  is  changing.  It  is  yellow.  It  is  the  color 
of  regret.  This  morning,  too,  I  heard  a  strange 
wind  in  the  trees.  In  its  voice  there  was  con- 
cealed a  threat.  At  sound  of  it  fear  crept  over 
my  garden.  Occasionally  maple  leaves  flutter 
down.  They  flutter  slowly,  as  if  loth  to  go. 

Do  you  remember  how  Madame  de  Sevigne 
loved  the  leaves?  When  she  grew  old  and  lonely 
—  and  was  less  amused  by  the  life  at  court  —  she 
used  to  make  a  sort  of  pilgrimage  to  the  wooded 
lanes  of  Livry  to  say  goodbye  to  them.  "  I  have 
come  to  spend  the  last  fine  days  and  to  say  good- 
bye to  the  leaves.  They  are  still  upon  the  trees. 
They  have  only  changed  color.  Instead  of  being 
green  they  are  like  a  sunrise  —  a  many-colored 
sunrise."  Thus,  she,  with  the  grace  of  that 
fluent  old  French  tongue  —  whose  mistress  she 
was  —  wrote  to  Bussy-Rabutin  in  an  eventful 
autumn  late  in  the  Great  Century. 

E. 


124 


I 


AM  THINKING  OF  IDLE  PEOPLE  TO- 

day.  Idleness  is  not  something  indiscriminately 
to  be  reprimanded.  In  mediaeval  Germany, 
there  was  a  saying  that  he  who  can  not  rest  and 
do  just  nothing  at  all  for  a  time,  is  possessed  of 
a  devil.  It  is  said,  indeed,  to  be  a  characteristic 
of  people  of  genius.  Old  Montaigne  thought  it 
was  so  necessary  a  part  of  life,  that  he  declared 
he  would  rather  his  servants  would  steal  a  little 
from  him  occasionally,  than  constantly  to  subject 
himself  to  the  annoyance  of  searching  out  the  cul- 
prits and  punishing  them.  In  addition,  it  is 
good  to  step  out  of  the  procession  once  in  a  while, 
and  rest,  and  watch  it  sweep  by.  To  keep  up  a 
continual  rush  of  energy  and  effort  is  to  do  per- 
manent injury  to  the  silences  that  precede  and 
follow  us. 

To  have  nothing  to  do  for  a  time  was  the  long- 
ing of  that  kindly  old  court  jester  of  the  Medici, 
il  mio  diletto  Berni.  I  recall  the  plaintive  grace 
with  which  he  says:  "/o  non  sono  persona  punta 
ambiziosa."  (I  am  not  at  all  an  ambitious  person.) 
He  would  have  found  favor  with  Oscar  Wilde, 
who  asserted  that  ambition  is  the  consolation  of 
mediocrity, 

126 


126      LETTERS    FROM    A    PRAIRIE    GARDEN 

Here  is  a  character  for  you  —  and  a  charming 
one  —  Berni!  To  Americans  his  name  sounds 
like  a  new  sauce  for  a  beef-steak  or  an  advertise- 
ment for  a  cordial.  It  is  not  so  often  heard  in 
Italy  now,  although  his  words  and  some  of  the 
phrases  he  coined  are  incorporated  in  the  body 
of  the  language. 

The  Italians  declare  that  their  Tuscan  wine 
loses  its  flavor  if  taken  elsewhere.  Berni  is  like 
it.  He  could  not  be  acclimatized  in  our  Saxon 
speech.  He  is  for  the  improvisitori-loving  Latins. 
He  is  peculiarly  suited  to  their  temperament. 
He  was  known  as  the  man  whose  name  sounds 
like  a  laugh  —  riso  simpatico.  That  is  a  gracious 
title  to  fame.  It  deserves  to  outlast  the  cen- 
turies. Horace  thought  that  his  name  must  be 
engraved  upon  lasting  bronze.  Pushkin  thought 
the  same.  Berni  chose  something  different,  the 
hearts  of  his  people.  He  was  the  good  friend  of 
the  great  men  of  the  Quattrocento.  We  find  him 
mentioned  constantly  in  the  letters  of  that  period, 
and  almost  always  with  some  term  of  endearment. 
To  pauper  and  prince  this  humble  Medicean 
jester  was  il  mio  divino  Berni,  mio  dolce  Berni, 
the  prince  of  all  the  satirists,  our  divine  and 
gentle  Berni.  I  do  not  know  of  a  character  in 
literature  who  was  so  universally  beloved  by  the 
people  among  whom  he  lived. 

There  is  a  letter  in  existence  written  by  Ilario 
"To  All  Christian  Readers,"  which  begins  as 


UPON    THE    PLAINS  127 

follows:  "Now  in  the  days  of  Clement  the 
Seventh,  there  lived  for  more  than  twenty  years 
at  the  Court  of  Rome,  one,  Messer  Francesco 
Berni,  a  man  of  letters,  who  was  greatly  beloved 
of  all  the  city  for  the  gentleness  and  grace  of  his 
nature."  He  was  born  late  in  the  fifteenth  cen- 
tury. His  life  continued  on  into  that  marvelous 
sixteenth  century  which  bore  the  Renaissance  to 
its  climax,  and  then  saw  it  fade  away  again  — 
far  from  the  Tuscan  hills  —  among  the  fields  of 
France,  at  the  court  of  an  indolent  monarch. 
His  native  village  was  Lamporecchio,  in  the 
valley  of  Nievole,  which  he  tells  us  was  a  pleasant 
place  beyond  the  Arno.  He  went  to  Florence 
when  he  was  quite  young  to  procure  work.  He 
was  unsuccessful  and  lived  there  in  poverty  until 
he  was  nineteen.  At  that  time  he  became  secre- 
tary to  Cardinal  Bibbiena,  who  was  his  uncle. 
He  calls  this  the  beginning  of  slavery. 

Now  I  quote  more  or  less  accurately  what 
Berni  has  said  of  himself.  He  served  the  Medici 
or  some  member  of  their  court  as  long  as  he  lived. 
When  his  uncle  died  he  was  employed  by  the 
Bishop  of  Verona,  who  was  chancellor  to  Leo 
the  Tenth,  a  Medicean  pope.  Here  he  pauses 
to  explain  that  he  is  stiU  a  slave  who  rebels  against 
his  chains.  He  detested  his  clerical  duties  which 
kept  him  on  the  go  from  morning  till  night.  His 
wit  and  his  charming  personality  made  him  a  great 
favorite  at  the  papal  court,  where  the  nights  were 


128      LETTERS    FROM    A    PRAIRIE    GARDEN 

spent  in  gambling  and  in  dissipation  of  all  kinds. 
He  is  always  complaining  of  lack  of  rest. 

Berni  was  not  at  all  the  energetic,  vigorous 
Tuscan;  the  indolence  of  the  south  was  in  him. 
He  disliked  effort  of  any  kind,  and  loved  only 
idleness  and  contemplation.  When  he  was  in  the 
employ  of  the  Cardinal  he  made  a  picture  of  him- 
self in  a  poem  which  I  am  going  to  take  out  of 
its  verse-form  and  translate  in  free  prose.  It  is 
pleasantly  self-conscious  and  ingenuous.  He  com- 
plains that  his  days  are  spent  with  a  bundle  of 
the  Cardinal's  letters  the  size  of  his  body  under 
one  arm,  and  a  bundle  of  written  orders  just  as 
large,  under  the  other  arm.  He  never  had  an 
opportunity  to  do  anything  that  he  wanted  to. 
He  was  not  even  free  at  night  just  so  long  as  there 
was  any  one  awake  about  the  palace  who  wished 
to  be  amused.  Being  the  receptacle  for  other 
men's  joys  and  sorrows,  he  never  had  a  chance 
to  have  any  of  his  own.  And  he  had  such  diffi- 
culty to  keep  from  falh'ng  in  love!  Besides  he  did 
not  think  that  he  was  at  all  bad  to  look  upon, 
which  made  it  more  difficult.  And  he  had  a  most 
amazing  nimble  tongue.  In  person  he  was  tall, 
slender,  dark,  and  swift  and  supple  of  motion. 
His  eyes,  however,  were  blue  and  there  was  a 
goodly  space  between  them.  He  closes  by  ex- 
plaining that  he  feels  sure  that  he  might  have 
grown  a  good  mustache,  if  his  master  had  not 
objected  to  his  wearing  it. 


UPON    THE    PLAINS  I2Q 

I  wish  I  could  have  seen  that  Florence  to  which 
Berni  came  from  his  little  village  beyond  the 
Arno.  They  were  busy  there  then.  They  were 
casting  bronze,  carving  marble,  hammering  gold, 
and  making  colors  glow  on  canvas.  One  of  the 
gardens  of  time  was  in  full  flower. 

One  of  the  things  that  interests  me  particu- 
larly, is  the  time  that  Berni's  longed-for  idleness 
came  to  him.  It  was  during  that  terrible  visita- 
tion of  the  plague  which  Manzoni  depicts  in  "/ 
Promessi  Sposi."  Berni  was  in  Rome  at  the 
time,  secretary  to  Cardinal  Bibbiena.  At  news 
of  the  approach  of  this  loathsome  disease,  the 
church  dignitaries  and  the  rulers  left.  They 
snapped  their  fingers  at  calls  of  duty  and  priestly 
pity.  The  city  was  abandoned  by  the  wealthy 
and  the  titled.  Our  gentle  Berni  was  left  alone  be- 
hind. This  was  his  first  taste  of  leisure.  This  was 
the  first  tune  in  his  hard-working  life  that  he  did 
not  have  to  run  at  somebody's  orders.  What  he 
writes  of  it  shocks  us  at  first  and  finally  amuses  us: 

"  Quest  e  quel  secol  d'oro,  e  quel  celeste 
Stato  innocente  primo  di  natura." 
(This  is  that  Age  of  Gold  and  that 
Celestial,  innocent,  first  state  of  nature.) 

The  hideous  harvest  of  death  did  not  disturb 
him.  He  had  a  good  time  and  he  did  not  hesitate 
to  say  so.  Not  once  —  he  tells  us —  was  he 
out  of  bed  before  noon.  He  stretched  himself 


l3o      LETTERS    FROM    A    PRAIRIE    GARDEN 

out  on  his  back  in  the  Cardinal's  luxurious  cham- 
ber, and  clapped  his  hands  for  the  servants  to 
bring  him  food  and  the  Cardinal's  choicest  wines. 
Here  all  day  long,  within  the  splendid  rooms  of 
this  renowned  palace,  he  wrote  his  jests,  his 
heart  overflowing  with  merriment,  and  laughed 
and  laughed,  while  outside  in  the  streets,  night 
and  day,  the  drivers  of  great  wagons  called: 
"Bring  out  your  dead!  Bring  out  your  dead!" 

"Why  should  I  not  be  happy?  I  fear  the 
slavery  of  daily  toil  far  more  than  I  fear  death. 
And  suppose  I  die  of  it?  At  least  I  shall  be  per- 
mitted to  die  in  peace.  There  will  be  no  notaries 
standing  about  to  make  my  will.  There  will 
be  no  meddlesome  people  to  keep  asking:  Come 
stai?  Come  stai?" 

His  poem  descriptive  of  the  plague  is  one  of 
his  most  popular  pieces.  In  it  he  gives  a  quaint 
opinion  of  the  nature  of  the  disease,  which  shows 
us  the  scientific  knowledge  of  that  day.  He 
thinks  it  is  a  combination  of  all  human  ills,  and 
that  other  diseases  flow  into  it  just  as  the  rivers 
flow  into  the  sea.  When  the  plague  came  to  an 
end,  Rome's  rulers  came  back.  It  was  then  the 
beginning  of  the  carnival  season.  But  our  indo- 
lent jester  did  not  even  enjoy  the  carnival  in  the 
Eternal  City.  He  could  only  regret  the  weeks 
that  had  preceded  it,  when  he  lay  in  bed  half  the 
day,  and  wrote  his  jests,  and  laughed,  in  that 
city  reeking  with  death.  He  never  ceased  to 


UPON    THE    PLAINS  l3l 

regret  the  time  when  he  had  been  a  great  lord 
in  deserted  Rome. 

The  mock  dignity  and  numerous  prefaces  with 
which  his  book  of  verses  begins,  are  partly  of  the 
age,  and  partly  Berni's  peculiar  personality.  The 
opening  poem  is  by  his  friend  II  Lasca,  who  steps 
to  the  front  and  gravely  speaks  a  little  piece  in 
honor  of  Berni,  which  is  something  like  this: 
"All  people  whose  hearts  are  not  hard  and  un- 
kind, but  sensitive  and  generous,  must  come 
and  do  honor  to  our  Berni,  whom  the  muses 
loved  so  greatly  they  made  him  the  first  trouba- 
dour and  master  of  the  burlesque  poets.  To 
compare  him  with  Burchiello,  the  barber,  would 
be  like  comparing  Charon,  the  demon,  with  Ga- 
briel, the  angel.  This  is  followed  by  a  still  briefer 
poem  by  the  same  poet.  Its  title  is  —  "Whoso- 
ever Reads."  It  begins  with  a  line  of  Petrarch:  — 

"Ye   who    listen    to    the   varied   rhyme    of    those 

caprices, 

Which  Berni,  the  divine  one,  wrote 
Using  the  vulgar  Tuscan  tongue." 

He  gravely  assures  us  that  all  the  Greek  and 
Latin  poets  put  together  are  not  worth  a  sou 
when  compared  with  Berni.  Likewise  he  assures 
us  that  we  may  read  the  poems  in  all  freedom,  be- 
cause Berni  never  offends  the  tongue  with  any 
wantonness  of  Tuscan  speech.  We  venture  to 
place  a  considerable  doubt  upon  this  last  assur- 


l32      LETTERS    FROM    A    PRAIRIE    GARDEN 

ance.  Berni  now  comes  out  and  makes  his  own 
little  bow.  He  introduces  himself  in  a  manner 
that  reminds  us  of  Montaigne's  introduction  to 
the  "Essays."  "I  wish  to  tell  you,  good  people 
all,  that  the  one  who  wrote  this  book  was  not 
at  all  an  ambitious  person,  and  he  snaps  his  fin- 
gers at  your  opinion.  He  wrote  the  book  to  suit 
himself  and  not  to  make  his  memory  famous.  He 
had  to  write  it,  because  the  thoughts  knocked  so 
hard  at  his  head  tnat  they  would  get  out.  He 
had  it  printed  because  his  friends  at  court  worried 
him  to  death  by  borrowing  his  manuscripts. 

"0!  give  me  your  book  a  while! 
Do  let  me  take  it! " 

Now  if  they  want  it,  let  them  go  to  a  shop  and 
buy  it!" 

In  the  "Rime"  we  find  good  writing  and  merry 
Tuscan  jests,  and  best  of  all,  the  exposition  of  a 
charming  and  sweet-tempered  nature.  The  style 
is  fine.  It  is  elegant  and  flexible.  Italian  critics 
declare  that  he  possessed  all  the  graces  of 
Catullus. 

Vasari  painted  his  picture,  and  then  wrote  the 
following  concerning  it:  "The  picture  in  this 
oval  is  of  Clement  the  Seventh,  painted  life  size, 
in  his  pontifical  robes.  ...  In  the  background 
I  have  painted  many  prelates  and  favorites  among 
whom  are  .  .  .  the  Bishop  of  Verona  and  Messer 
Francesco  Berni,  a  most  witty  poet.  .  .  . 


UPON   THE   PLAINS  l33 

Prince  I  am  very  glad  to  see  him  .  .  .  because 
whatever  he  wrote  was  subtle  and  witty  and 
charming." 

It  had  been  prophesied  grimly  by  priestly 
pedants  that  all  the  followers  of  this  pagan 
Medicean  court,  who  dressed  life  in  a  truly 
Augustan  splendor,  possessed  some  of  the  imperial 
fatality  of  the  vanished  Caesars  they  imitated, 
and  would  die  young  and  of  strange  deaths. 
Many  of  them  hastened  to  fulfill  this  prophecy. 
Blond  Mirandola  died  of  melancholy;  handsome 
Giulano  de  Medici  met  death  at  hands  of  an 
assassin.  And  Berni  —  the  date  of  whose  death 
is  not  certain  —  did  not  live  to  be  old,  and  the 
cause  of  it  is  wrapped  in  mystery.  Some  say 
Duke  Alessandro  murdered  him;  some  say  that 
it  was  Cardinal  Medici  himself  who  did  it  — 
and  he  had  been  Berni's  good  friend  in  those 
gay  gardens  of  Careggi. 

He  who  had  lived  a  jester,  died  a  tragic  death 
at  the  hands  of  a  prince.  He  was  the  true  clown 
who  was  killed  by  his  king. 

E. 


T, 


HE  LEAVES  ARE  POLLING  FROM  THE 

arbor,  or  curling  up,  and  the  grapes  are  ripe. 
The  arbor  is  roofed  now  with  black-purple,  pen- 
dant bunches  swinging  in  the  wind,  and  a  rich, 
yellow  light  envelopes  the  garden. 

I  should  like  to  make  wine  of  some  of  these 
grapes.  Do  you  remember  those  wine  cellars  of 
Rome  which  Horace  tells  us  about,  how  they 
marked  time?  Upon  each  bottle  was  written  the 
name  of  the  consul  and  the  events  of  the  day. 
One  bottle  would  tell  you  about  Actium,  where 
the  battle  was  fought,  and  the  fall  of  Antony. 
There  were  wines  whose  inscriptions  called  up 
memories  of  the  stormy  valleys  of  Thrace  where 
winter  reigns,  of  the  roar  of  the  Pontic  pines, 
from  whose  wood  that  beloved  boat  (phaselus 
ille)  of  Catullus  was  made. 

If  I  bottled  my  wine  this  autumn,  each  bottle 
would  bear  some  inscription  to  An  Unknown. 
Perhaps  it  would  keep  for  me  the  memory  of  a 
summer  that  was  passed,  in  that  gayest  of  gar- 
dens —  which  men  call  youth. 

Did  you  ever  see  Chardin's  description  of  the 
wine  cellar  of  a  ruler  of  Ispahan  in  the  seven- 
teenth century?  He  says  the  precious  liquid 
was  bottled  in  Venetian  glass,  in  rock  crystal 
enriched  with  gems,  in  coral  and  in  jade.  E. 

i34 


I 


T  IS  WINDY  AND  DUSTY.    I  CAN  HEAR 

the  soft  pietinement  of  sand  particles  upon  the 
roof.  I  think  I  shall  not  remain  upon  the  plains 
to-day;  I  am  going  away.  Sitting  right  here  in 
my  garden  I  have  traveled  a  good  deal.  Yet  I 
have  no  reputation  as  a  globe  trotter.  At  the 
same  time  I  have  seen  the  streets  of  fabulous 
cities  which  could  equal  any  of  Bagdad's  "shrines 
of  fretted  gold."  Who  has  the  right  to  say,  I 
should  like  to  know,  what  countries  he  has  seen 
who  has  sat  by  the  fireside  all  his  days! 

First,  to-day,  I  shall  travel  with  Loti.  He  is 
a  good  companion  and  I  enjoy  him.  I  like  his 
sensitiveness  to  things  that  are  fine,  and  his  dis- 
tinction. I  like  his  buoyant  interest  in  travel 
and  novelty  and  adventure.  He  has  the  southern 
warmth  and  imagination.  I  like  to  go  with  him 
to  India  (Ulnde  sans  les  Anglais),  to  Stamboul 
(Les  Desenchantees),  to  the  orange-hued  landscape 
of  Algiers  (Le  Roman  d'un  Spahi).  I  am  indebted 
to  these  books  for  hours  of  happiness  and  instruc- 
tion. They  do  not  grow  old  and  I  do  not  weary 
of  them.  They  are  always  at  hand  ready  to 
shelter  me  from  disagreeable  occurrences.  They 
banish  annoyances  with  the  divine  surety  and 

i35 


l36      LETTERS    FROM   A   PRAIRIE    GARDEN 

complacency  with  which  it  was  the  habit  of  good 
Queen  Juno  "to  banish  flies  and  gnats  from  Ida, 
at  the  hour  of  goblet  pledge."  From  repeated 
readings  throughout  the  years  I  know  pages  and 
paragraphs  by  heart.  There  is  something  in 
the  prose  of  the  Latin  races  that  gives  me  a  super- 
lative pleasure.  I  think  I  see  a  splendor  in  them 
that  perhaps  is  not  there.  As  soon  as  I  read  the 
first  lines  of  any  of  these  seductive  books,  the 
magic  commences.  My  surroundings  have 
changed.  Work  and  duties  are  no  more.  I  am 
sailing  over  southern  seas.  Salt  spray  touches 
my  face.  I  am  filled  with  energy  and  strength. 
About  me  spreads  a  world  of  radiant  summer, 
novelty,  and  adventure.  An  attractive  strange- 
ness envelopes  me,  and  I  am  happy. 

Not  all  people  who  travel  in  a  garden  as  I  do 
have  been  compelled  to.  Some  have  done  it  by 
preference.  Consider,  too,  the  discomforts  that 
are  avoided  in  my  easy  way  of  going  from  place 
to  place.  Do  you  recall  this  plaintive  statement 
from  Flaubert's  "  L' Education  Sentimentale?" 
"He  knew  the  melancholy  of  the  packet  boats, 
the  awakening  in  chilly  dawns  under  tents,  the 
dizzy  confusion  of  landscapes  and  ruins,  the 
bitterness  of  sympathies  interrupted." 

Robert  Burton  —  who  had  the  reputation  of 
knowing  everything  there  was  in  the  world  to 
know  —  and  who  all  but  proved  it  in  that  strange 
book  of  his,  "The  Anatomy  of  Melancholy," 


UPON    THE    PLAINS  187 

writes:  "Methinks  it  would  please  any  man  .  .  . 
to  behold  as  it  were  all  the  remote  provinces, 
towns,  cities  of  the  world,  and  never  go  forth  of 
the  limits  of  his  study."  There  was  Ariosto,  too, 
for  instance.  It  was  his  ideal  of  pleasure  to  travel 
in  a  garden.  Whenever  time  and  his  duties  per- 
mitted, he  sought  a  sheltered  corner  of  the  garden 
of  his  princely  protector,  and  there  turned  over 
the  leaves  of  maps. and  books  of  travel.  Marco 
Polo  himself  probably  never  saw  a  land  that 
could  compare  with  the  one  that  Ariosto  saw 
then. 

Xavier  de  Maistre  preferred  a  chamber  to 
journey  in.  Do  you  remember  his  "  Voyage 
Autour  de  ma  Chambre?"  That  was  a  spirited, 
entertaining  journey,  too.  I  have  taken  it  with 
him  repeatedly.  Lucian's  "History,"  which  he 
carelessly  calls  "Veracious,"  is  merely  an  excur- 
sion to  a  non-geographical  place  which  he  names 
"The  Blessed  Isle."  Exertion  was  distasteful 
to  lazy  Lucian,  except  that  of  the  mind,  and 
with  the  mind  he  lived  prodigiously.  Brave 
Cyrano  of  the  faithful  heart  and  chivalrous 
sword,  took  a  journey  to  the  moon  in  this  same 
easy  and  inexpensive  way.  So  you  see  that 
people  who  are  bounded  by  a  little  garden  and  a 
slender  purse,  are  not  so  greatly  to  be  pitied. 

Do  not  fail  to  take  a  trip  with  Stevenson.  He 
is  a  gay,  good-humored  fellow,  like  Loti,  and  a 
first-class  traveling  companion.  Go  to  Scotland 


l38      LETTERS    FROM    A    PRAIRIE    GARDEN 

with  him  first.  He  has  made  Scotland  as  desir- 
able and  as  lovely  as  Venice.  He  can  show  you 
a  wonderful  Edinburgh.  Go,  too,  with  him  to  see 
the  black,  dripping  rocks  and  hear  the  thunder 
of  the  surge  in  "Night  and  the  Merry  Men," 
and  that  windy  Spanish  valley,  between  the 
mountains,  splashed  with  the  petulant  light  of 
autumn.  Like  Loti  and  Renoir,  he  lived  in  the 
land  of  youth. 

Sitting  right  here  in  my  arbor,  in  this  humble 
prairie  garden,  with  books  and  with  engravings, 
I  have  really  seen  a  good  deal.  In  pictures  in 
current  periodicals  of  the  north  of  Europe  —  in 
"  Jugend"  especially  —  I  have  watched  spring 
come  creeping  over  the  Bohemian  forests,  then 
northward  to  the  Valdai  Hills,  and  on  to  the 
Finnish  marshes.  I  have  watched  it  wave  its 
blossoming  fruit  tree  boughs  along  the  valleys  of 
the  Rhine.  I  can  sit  here  at  my  ease  and  count 
the  swallows  flying  over  the  roofs  of  that  old 
Paris  mad  Meryon  etched.  Not  even  here  upon 
the  plains  —  in  the  great  light  —  do  they  have 
such  sweep  and  swing.  From  the  paintings  of 
historic  gardens  made  by  Rusinol,  I  have  received 
the  keenest  sense  of  the  brooding  spirit  of  gen- 
erations that  have  gone.  I  have  come  near  the 
poignant  personalities  that  have  frequented  these 
gardens.  For  me  they  have  been  granted  a 
renewal  of  visible  life.  With  Sheffield  and  Frey- 
tag  I  have  seen  the  primeval  forests  of  Germany; 


UPON    THE    PLAINS  189 

with  Pushkin,  Lermontov,  and  Mickiewicz,  the 
mountain  world  of  southern  Russia;  with  Ver- 
haeren,  the  cities  of  Flanders;  with  Alberuni, 
India  the  ancient.  And  with  all  of  them  I  have 
felt  the  fascination  that  wanderers  feel  for  the 
road,  an  emotion  as  old  as  time.  Catullus,  the 
Roman,  confessed  to  it  in  the  long  ago.  When 
the  spring  winds  began  to  blow  he  was  restless, 
and  he  thought  of  the  bright  cities  of  Asia,  and 
his  feet  were  eager  for  travel.  (Jam  Iseti  studio 
pedes  vigescunt.)  There  is  magic  in  a  road. 
Stevenson  felt  the  urge  of  it  always,  and  he  con- 
fessed it  in  "Will  o'  the  Mill,"  who  longed  to 
know  where  the  river  went.  It  was  the  cause  of 
the  attraction  of  that  bright  river  of  the  south 
of  France  to  Daudet.  ("Le  Pape  est  Mor/.")  It 
was  one  of  the  dominant  influences  in  the  life 
of  George  Sand.  In  fact  art  and  life  are  merely 
parts  of  the  history  of  the  road.  Along  this  road 
civilization  traveled. 

The  Marseillaise  was  born  of  the  road.  Bare- 
foot, defiant  vagabonds  on  their  way  to  Paris 
and  the  Revolution  wrote  it  as  they  walked  along. 
Petofi,  the  Hungarian,  wrote  his  book  of  lyrics 
while  he  was  a  wandering  player,  grateful  for  a 
"hand-out"  from  any  one. 

In  the  warm  south  the  road  is  particularly 
conspicuous  in  letters.  "//  Morgante  Maggiore" 
is  merry  Pulci's  dream-journey  across  the  road- 
ways of  the  sky,  where  he  could  look  down  upon 


LETTERS   FROM   A    PRAIRIE    GARDEN 

the  world  like  a  pleasant,  outspread  picture. 
Giotto,  Petrarch,  Leonardo,  Tasso,  were  wanderers 
upon  the  road.  The  Iliad,  the  ./Eneid,  the 
Lusiados,  were  wanderers'  songs.  So  I  do  not 
complain  because  my  garden  looks  upon  the 
primitive  Santa  Fe  trail,  and  not  upon  Le  Boule- 
vard des  Italiens,  nor  the  Riva  degli  Schiavoni. 
Nor  do  I  long  to  be  elsewhere,  nor  to  have  at 
my  command  the  wings  of  the  morning  to  fly 
to  the  ends  of  the  earth.  My  mind  can  make 
possible  for  me  that  ancient  dream  of  alchemists 
who  desired  "to  flow  through  the  veins  of  nature 
and  to  enjoy  universal  life."  My  mind  shall  be 
to  me  as  were  the  winged  shoes  to  Mercury  or 
the  magic  cloak  to  Faust,  and  bear  me  whereso- 
ever I  wish.  Even  when  the  long  sleep  comes, 
still  shall  I  go  on,  because  death  is  only  a  con- 
tinuation of  the  same  long  road. 

E. 


1V-LY  GARDEN  NEVER  LOOKS  TWICE 
the  same.  That  is  because  I  see  it  through 
changing  moods.  Every  thing  is  new  every 
moment.  It  is  a  strange  satire  upon  intelligence 
that  people  can  not  find  interesting  things  with- 
out traveling  seas  to  reach  them.  It  is  certain 
that  when  they  do  reach  them,  they  can  not  see 
them.  It  is  the  old  story  of  driving  the  horse  to 
water. 

All  things  are  everywhere  for  him  who  has 
eyes.  Whittier  believed  that  "nature  will  unveil 
as  many  of  her  secrets  to  me  among  my  narrow 
garden  paths  as  to  the  most  accomplished  globe 
trotter."  Sir  Thomas  Brown  declared:  "We 
carry  within  us  the  wonders  we  seek  without." 

Epicurus  found  Jupiter's  brains  in  a  bowl  of 
Cytheridian  cheese,  and  the  tongues  of  nightin- 
gales in  onions.  You  see  what  a  practical  philoso- 
pher he  was!  Gold  could  not  have  done  that. 
To  be  able  to  see  is  a  rare  thing.  And  it  is  just 
as  necessary  to  learn  to  do  this,  as  to  learn  to 
dance  or  to  paint.  The  developed  power  does 
not  belong  to  any  one  at  birth.  The  more  highly 
trained  the  vision,  the  more  its  possessor  lives. 
The  best  training  for  this  —  this  learning  to  see 


1^2      LETTERS    FROM    A    PRAIRIE    GARDEN 

—  is  to  look  at  pictures,  to  contemplate  the 
ideals  which  great  painters  have  created,  to 
follow  for  a  while  their  seeing.  This  helps  to 
correct,  and  to  break  our  own  stiff  and  common- 
place vision.  They  literally  open  our  eyes.  People 
who  can  see,  need  no  other  occupation  to  fill  in 
that  long  space  which  stretches  between  birth 
and  death.  Pictures  are  little  enchanted  islands 
in  the  great,  uncharted  sea  of  the  unknown, 
where  we  can  rest  a  while,  and  amuse  ourselves. 
It  is  not  money  and  travel  that  make  men  see. 
One  sees  only  with  eyes  highly  trained  and  sensi- 
tive. The  untrained  vision  is  harsh,  uneven, 
fragmentary.  Only  art  can  weld  it  temporarily 
into  unity  and  strength. 

George  Eliot  did  not  inherit  this  possession  in 
any  large  degree.  Her  mind  was  akin  to  Emer- 
son's in  a  certain  lack  of  aesthetic  development. 
Neither  of  them  found  Italy  particularly  lovely. 
In  her  eyes,  Rome  was  neither  lovely  nor  pictur- 
esque. Her  hasty  comments  upon  the  pictures  and 
sculpture  of  the  Eternal  City  betray  a  nature 
insensitive  to  color  and  line.  She  used  her  eyes 
as  a  diligent  and  praiseworthy  pedagogue,  not 
as  an  artist  and  a  connoisseur.  Peculiarly  enough 
it  wast  he  sensuous  in  art  that  appealed  most  to 
her  —  Rubens,  Poussin.  George  Eliot  criticized 
the  great  art  of  Italy  with  crude,  unsympa- 
thetic eyes,  or  else  with  a  dull  and  overwhelm- 
ing sense  of  her  own  importance.  In  her  judg- 


UPON    THE    PLAINS  l43 

merit  there  was  the  unusual  combination  of  sen- 
suality and  coldness.  On  that  Italian  journey  of 
hers  in  1860  she  seemed  dead  to  every  thing  except 
what  the  world  was  saying  about  herself.  How 
unlike  was  her  attitude  toward  Greek  and  Roman 
art  to  that  of  the  Brownings,  Shelley,  Byron, 
Landor,  Symons,  and  all  the  Germans  (except 
Schiller),  Goethe  and  Winkleman  leading  the  list. 
She  did  not  know  that  the  eye  must  be  trained 
(as  well  as  the  mind)  unless  some  marvelous 
grace  of  nature  gives  an  highly  instructed  vision. 
Her  first  face  to  face  encounter  with  the  impas- 
sioned art  of  the  south,  gave  her  an  uncomforta- 
ble mental  and  visual  wrench.  She  came  to  it 
with  a  cold,  self-opinionated,  insular  superiority. 
Her  sympathy  for  sorrow  in  life  was  keener  than 
her  sympathy  for  beauty.  Her  criticism  of  paint- 
ing was  usually  upon  the  expression  in  the  eyes. 
That  settled  for  her  the  question  of  greatness  or 
triviality.  She  did  not  like  the  drawing,  com- 
position, or  coloring  of  Tintoretto,  Veronese, 
Angelo.  Of  Milan  cathedral  she  wrote:  "It  no 
longer  satisfied  my  eyes."  Of  Luini:  "He  has 
not  power  enough  for  any  composition  of  high 
character."  She  was  a  highly  instructed  woman, 
rather  than  one  of  rare  taste  and  perception. 
She  was  always  something  of  a  super-educated 
pedagogue. 

Schiller  declared  that  he  had  no  desire  to  see 
Italy  or  its  art.     In  a  letter  to  Humboldt  he 


l44      LETTERS    FROM    A    PRAIRIE    GARDEN 

writes:  "Unfortunately  the  great  art  of  Italy 
and  Rome  are  not  for  me,  because  I  have  neither 
interest  nor  taste  for  plastic  art."  And  Matilde 
Serao  exclaimed  in  her  "Letters  of  a  Traveler" 
(Letiere  d'una  Viaggiatrice) :  "Who  can  ever  get 
away  from  the  fascination  of  Rome!  "  She  speaks 
of  the  pleasure  of  "seeking  in  Rome  not  only  the 
vast  conceptions  of  sovereigns,  the  enormous 
undertakings  of  art  completed  miraculously,  the 
traces  of  an  hundred  tyrannical  and  magnificent 
wills,  but  the  soul  of  Rome  which  is  found  in  the 
shadow  of  a  park,  in  the  colors  upon  the  horizon, 
in  a  rose  gathered  at  entrance  to  the  catacombs 
...  in  a  little  forgotten  church  in  an  unfre- 
quented quarter.  ..."  How  much  greater  in 
extent  —  and  nobler  —  and  more  circumstantial, 
and  sensitive,  was  the  Greek-Italian  woman's 
comprehension  of  "alma  Roma"  than  the  Eng- 
lish woman's.  A  new — or  a  different — idea  has 
to  enter  an  English  mind  by  the  back  door. 

When  I  read  the  account  of  that  early  journey 
of  George  Eliot's  to  Rome,  I  recall  involuntarily 
some  words  of  Thoreau:  "I  look  upon  England 
to-day  as  an  old  gentleman  who  is  traveling  with 
a  great  deal  of  luggage,  trumpery,  which  he  has 
accumulated  from  long  housekeeping,  which  he 
has  not  courage  to  burn;  great  trunk,  little  trunk, 
band-box  and  bundle."  The  English  have  never 
been  critics  in  the  first  class.  Only  the  Latin 
mind  has  achieved  this  supremely.  To  be  con- 


UPON    THE   PLAINS 

vinced  it  is  merely  necessary  to  recall  Quintilian, 
Sainte-Beuve,  Taine,  Brunetiere.  Match  them  if 
you  can,  you  whom  I  accuse  of  anglophilism! 

How  unlike  were  the  eyes  of  Goethe  and 
Schiller!  The  former  called  Italy  "that  fortunate 
dwelling  place  of  man,"  and  wrote  and  spoke  of 
it  always  with  the  greatest  love  and  enthusiasm. 
He  wrote  to  Schiller:  "  I  could  only  look  and  look 
and  admire."  Addison  was  cold  to  the  impas- 
sioned art  of  the  south.  He  found  it  scarcely 
worth  the  effort  of  mention.  But  Lessing  was 
different.  He  said  in  a  letter  to  his  brother  Karl 
in  1776:  "This  little  foretaste  (Venice,  from 
which  place  he  was  sending  the  letter)  arouses 
in  me  the  old  desire  ...  to  live  and  die  in 
Italy." 

Schiller  —  delightful  creator  that  he  was  — 
wrote  letters  filled  with  complaints  and  physical 
discomforts.  There  was  not  much  of  the  com- 
fortable, sensuous  pagan  about  him.  For  little 
things  he  had  the  sharp  eye  of  a  puritan.  The 
joyous  vision  of  the  poet  did  not  bring  him 
happy  forgetfulness.  This  is  a  little  peculiar 
coming  as  he  did  between  Winkleman  and  Goethe, 
with  their  exhaustive  knowledge  of  antique  life 
and  appreciation  of  its  unfevered  calm. 

Dostoievsky,  too,  was  miserable  in  the  south 
of  Europe.  His  body  and  soul  were  so  warped 
with  suffering,  that  the  gay  Latin  cities  were  a 
reproach  to  him.  In  addition,  he  disliked  travel. 


l46      LETTERS    FROM    A    PRAIRIE    GARDEN 

He  hated  Berlin.  "I  left  that  wearisome  Berlin 
as  speedily  as  possible.  I  could  only  endure  for 
one  day  those  wearisome  Germans,  who  get  on 
my  nerves  and  make  me  rage." 

I  should  like  to  see  Italy  as  it  looked  to  Heine 
when  he  wrote  "The  Florentine  Nights,"  or  as 
it  looked  to  Goethe  when  he  composed  "The 
Roman  Elegies."  And  I  should  like  to  see  the 
pictures  of  the  south  of  Europe  as  they  were 
mirrored  in  the  twenty-three-year-old  eyes  of 
Rubens  on  that  first  enchanted  visit,  or  the  pic- 
tures of  the  Low  Countries  as  they  looked  to 
Fromentin  in  his  maturity.  They  had  eyes. 
They  could  see. 

E. 


HIS  MORNING  I  TOOK  MY  CATA- 
logues  with  me  to  the  garden.  I  turn  their  pages 
pleasurably,  a  pencil  in  my  hand,  marking  the 
books  I  wish  to  own.  This  effort  is  quite  useless 
because  I  have  no  money  with  which  to  purchase. 
But  I  keep  at  it  just  the  same.  I  do  not  know  of 
anything  I  do  more  carefully.  You  should  see 
my  catalogues.  They  represent  the  chief  lan- 
guages of  the  earth.  And  I  recall  just  now 
Hammerton  saying  that  no  one  can  read  fluently 
more  than  two  languages.  And  there  was  Milton 
who  read  them  almost  all  —  ancient  and  modern. 
And  the  author  of  "Vathek,"  too,  not  to  men- 
tion Jeremiah  Curtin,  and  a  dozen  others. 

Sometimes  I  put  in  a  day  trying  to  decide  be- 
tween different  books.  The  fact  that  I  have  no 
money  with  which  to  buy  either  book  does  not 
change  my  pleasure  in  the  least.  After  I  have 
purchased  my  library,  then  I  build  a  house  and 
arrange  a  room  in  which  to  keep  it.  I  do  this 
with  such  care  that  I  could  find  any  book  in  my 
phantom  library  on  a  dark  night  —  without  the 
help  of  a  candle.  If  I  had  money  I  should  not 
enjoy  buying  books  half  so  much.  It  would  lose 
its  distinction  then.  It  would  become  common- 
147 


l48      LETTERS    FROM    A    PRAIRIE    GARDEN 

place,  something  that  any  one  could  do.  I  really 
prefer  to  be  "  a  lord  of  dust,  an  emperor  of  dreams." 
Money  is  merely  a  sort  of  pleasant  vulgarity.  It 
is  one  of  the  soft  and  padded  cushions  for  the 
couch  of  mediocrity.  One  should  have  the  love 
of  fine  things  in  one's  heart,  their  comprehension 
in  one's  brain,  and  then  leave  their  possession  — 
which  is  the  insignificant  thing  —  to  the  Philis- 
tine. 

E. 


N, 


IG,  MY  CAT,  SHARES  THE  GARDEN 

with  me.  I  wish  you  could  see  Nig!  She  is  as 
black  as  ebony  and  she  has  been  washed  and 
brushed  until  she  shines  like  silk.  Her  eyes  are 
green,  and  she  has  the  most  engaging  suppleness. 
No  trained  danseuse  can  equal  my  Nig,  nor  possess 
such  music  of  muscles.  In  this  ease  of  movement, 
this  unflagging  physical  fitness,  there  must  be 
pleasure  that  is  considerable. 

When  she  is  angry  she  is  good  to  look  at.  She 
lashes  her  sleek  body  with  her  tail,  every  hair 
bristles  with  rage,  and  her  green  eyes  become 
yellow  as  topazes.  She  is  really  a  tiger  whom 
years  have  made  harmless  and  diminutive,  with- 
out eliminating  her  primitive  emotions. 

Fable  insists  that  Nig  has  had  nine  lives.  That 
is  why  she  feels  so  superior  to  me  who  am  limited 
to  one.  She  scorns  my  garden,  too,  because  her 
memories  are  of  a  past  that  is  prodigious.  In 
Egypt,  the  ancient,  they  worshipped  her,  my 
Nig.  They  carved  her  face  in  indestructible 
stone,  and  left  her  looking  out  across  the  desert. 
And  the  expression  upon  that  face  the  suns  of 
centuries  have  not  greatly  changed.  It  is  still 
subtle  and  cruel  and  untrustworthy. 


l5o      LETTERS    FROM    A    PRAIRIE    GARDEN 

Very  likely  she  knew  Thebes  the  rose-hued  and 
its  palaces  of  terra  cotta,  towered  over  by  giant 
lotus  blossoms  painted  pink  and  blue.  Some- 
times at  sunset  when  she  is  quiet,  and  her  paws 
are  stretched  out  straight  in  front  of  her,  side 
by  side,  in  that  hieratic  attitude  of  her  ancestor, 
the  Sphinx,  and  she  is  looking  ahead  oblivious  of 
me,  I  wonder  if  she  is  recalling  that  prodigious 
desert  sky-line  fretted  with  gigantic  blossoms 
hewn  of  stone? 

E. 


I 


HAVE  FINISHED  HUSKING  THE  CORN 

for  dinner.  It  is  not  deeply  yellow  like  corn  grown 
in  the  north.  It  is  pale.  I  think  perhaps  it  re- 
sembles the  Orlov  pearls. 

A  basket  of  vegetables  has  just  been  brought 
to  me  by  a  farmer  who  lives  on  the  other  side  of 
the  Arkansas.  The  skins  of  the  onions  are  lovely 
considered  as  delicately  woven  tissue.  Faint 
spirals  of  color,  like  fading  rainbows,  slip  across 
them,  and  arranged  with  the  greatest  nicety. 
Chinese  potters  tried  to  make  the  surface  of  a 
certain  porcelain  like  them,  which,  when  they 
partially  succeeded,  they  named  "onion-skin." 
The  brush  of  Chardin  painted  them  with  love 
and  zest.  The  red  of  the  beets  I  can  decompose 
in  my  eyes  into  deep  and  angry  blues,  that  flush 
again  with  violet,  and  mount  to  red.  Shelling 
cranberry  beans  is  a  pleasure  almost  equal  to 
diving  for  pearls.  After  the  long,  protecting  pod 
is  opened,  each  bean  is  covered  with  a  white, 
sparkling  gauze,  to  protect  the  delicate  circle 
of  the  bean,  which  has  bright  dots  of  enamel 
upon  a  surface  just  touched  with  grey.  Upon  a 
few  I  have  found  dots  that  had  the  sad  and  wist- 
ful blue  of  chalcedony.  The  heart  of  a  freshly 

161 


l52      LETTERS    FROM    A    PRAIRIE    GARDEN 

cut  cabbage  is  just  the  hue  of  the  huge  ivory 
objects  African  kings  have  carved.  And  this 
changes  by  the  subtlest  gradations  to  wet,  re- 
freshing green. 

When  I  unpacked  my  basket  of  vegetables 
this  morning,  it  exhaled  the  freshness  of  night 
on  the  plain,  and  something  of  the  bitter  scent 
of  prairie  weeds.  It  seems  foolish  to  envy  wealth, 
or  to  bother  one's  head  about  warrantee  deeds, 
banks,  loans  and  the  like,  when  we  all  inherit 
the  earth.  Nothing  that  is  really  fine  can  be 
purchased  —  with  money  —  because  its  posession 
must  be  universal  and  belong  to  all. 

E. 


I 


WHO  LOVE  THE  COUNTRY  WRITE  TO 

you  who  love  the  city.  Not  many  love  so  well 
the  places  where  people  are  not  as  I.  Lamb  was 
like  you.  He  cared  only  for  the  stones  and  roofs 
of  London.  But  that  was  because  he  had  been 
thirty-three  years  in  a  counting  house.  For  that 
period  of  his  with  the  East  India  Company,  I 
have  the  liveliest  pity.  In  a  letter  to  Wordsworth 
he  remarked:  "I  have  no  passion  for  groves  and 
valleys  ...  so  fading  upon  me  from  disuse  are 
the  beauties  of  nature."  He  even  declared  "... 
a  garden  was  the  primitive  prison,  till  man  luckily 
sinned  himself  out  of  it." 

I  had  red  raspberries  for  breakfast  this  morn- 
ing which  makes  this  a  remarkable  day.  I  wish 
you  could  have  seen  them  piled  upon  powdered 
ice,  with  yellow  cream  on  top  of  them.  I  recall 
a  dish  of  berries  that  Renoir  painted  that  has 
just  this  luscious  ripeness.  Red  raspberries  are 
rare  upon  the  plains.  Here  we  seldom  see  any- 
thing but  the  black  raspberry.  And  they  are 
not  home  grown. 

The  eating  is  made  up  of  many  pleasures.  Just 
as  soon  as  their  odor  strikes  my  face,  the  present 
vanishes  and  I  am  a  child  again  —  careless  and 
free  —  in  the  old,  bleak,  mountain  pastures.  E. 

i53 


H< 


_OW  FOOLISH  TO  INSIST  UPON  SEEING 

a  woman  whose  presence  might  not  please  you 
when  according  to  this  old  story  I  am  about  to 
tell  you,  you  could  better  create  one  to  suit 
yourself. 

Hsec  fabula  dicit. 

The  land  which  we  call  Persia  was  once  Iran. 
And  there  the  roses  bloomed  prodigiously.  So 
great  was  their  richness  that  they  were  cultivated 
everywhere,  and  the  word  was  upon  the  tongues 
of  the  people.  Indeed  so  far  went  this  love  for 
a  flower  that  the  divisions  of  their  books  were 
called  not  chapters,  as  ours  are  called,  but  roses. 
And  at  other  times,  "Gate- Ways"-  -presumably 
to  gardens  of  roses.  This  which  I  am  about  to 
relate  is  the  first  leaf  of  the  one  hundred  and 
fifty-first  rose  of  a  sacred  book  called  the  Tuti 
Nameh. 

In  the  heart  of  central  Iran  it  is  as  if  the  gaunt 
arms  of  ancient  mountains  held  up  emerald-green 
valleys  for  the  gods  to  refresh  their  eyes  upon. 
Among  these  mountain-valleys  are  white,  earth- 
walled  villages,  in  which  are  mosques  built  of 
tiles  so  blue  that  the  eye  can  not  distinguish 
them  from  gigantic  turquoises. 

1 54 


UPON   THE   PLAINS  l55 

In  the  mysterious  streets  —  which  are  walled 
—  move  forms  of  women  in  pantaloons  of  silk  — 
pink,  yellow,  green  —  short,  embroidered  jackets, 
and  thrown  over  all,  gleaming,  gold-wrought 
gauzes.  And  through  these  streets  float  tinkle  of 
laughter,  murmured  words  of  love,  and  scent  of 
roses.  Gardens  are  hidden  behind  the  walls,  and 
from  them  one  hears  the  sound  of  ranning  water. 

From  one  of  these  gem-blue  villages  three 
shepherds  were  sent  to  pasture  the  sheep.  They 
grieved  to  leave  their  village.  They  were  sad 
in  the  unpeopled  valley  above  which  the  gaunt, 
grey  mountains  rose.  They  had  no  one  to  talk 
with,  because  each  day  each  one  took  his  part 
of  the  herd  to  a  different  water  spring  so  that 
they  spent  the  days  alone  with  the  sheep.  So 
greatly  did  loneliness  and  silence  prey  upon  them 
they  all  but  fell  ill.  They  lost  heart.  They  lost 
interest  in  their  duties. 

One  day  the  first  shepherd  went  to  a  new  valley 
that  was  even  higher  and  nearer  to  the  deathless 
summits,  whose  silence  and  impressive  outline 
instilled  an  unknown  feeling  that  resembled  rever- 
ence. He  fell  upon  his  knees  in  the  quiet  of  the 
fields.  He  prayed  for  something  to  relieve  his 
loneliness.  When  he  arose  and  opened  his  eyes 
he  saw  beside  him  on  the  ground  a  piece  of  wood 
the  size  and  shape  of  his  body.  Beside  the  wood 
were  chisels,  hammers,  knives. 

What  should  he  do  with  these  things  which 


l56      LETTERS   FROM   A   PRAIRIE    GARDEN 

had  fallen  from  above  in  answer  to  prayer?  The 
idea  occurred  to  him  to  carve  of  the  wood  a  com- 
panion. And  he  decided  at  length  that  it  should 
be  a  woman. 

Day  after  day  he  worked  upon  it.  He  forgot 
his  loneliness.  In  the  morning  he  was  the  first 
to  set  out  with  the  sheep  because  he  did  not  wish 
to  miss  a  moment  of  daylight.  In  the  evening  he 
was  the  last  to  turn  toward  camp.  His  com- 
panions noticed  the  change.  They  saw  he  was 
happy  but  they  did  not  know  the  cause. 

When  the  statue  of  wood  was  finished  and 
showed  the  form  of  a  woman  —  because  he  had 
done  his  work  well  —  he  took  it  with  him  to  the 
camp  for  his  companions  to  see. 

The  next  morning  the  second  shepherd  prayed 
in  the  valley  where  he  fed  his  sheep  that  a  com- 
panion be  given  him.  When  he  arose  from  his 
knees  and  opened  his  eyes,  he  found  beside  him 
paints,  brushes,  jewels,  veils,  and  silks.  He 
understood.  He  drove  his  thirsty  sheep  back  to 
camp.  With  the  paint  he  painted  the  bare  wood 
to  resemble  the  women  he  had  known  in  the 
gem-blue  villages  of  Iran.  Then  he  dressed  it  in 
silken  pantaloons,  and  jacket.  He  placed  gems 
upon  wrists,  throat,  brow.  Over  all  he  flung  the 
transparent  veil. 

That  night  when  the  other  shepherds  came 
from  the  hills  late,  under  a  high,  clear  moon, 
that  hung  above  the  great,  grey  mountains  like 


UPON    THE    PLAINS  167 

an  exiled,  pallid  rose,  they  saw  the  statue  robed 
and  dressed.  The  third  shepherd  fell  upon  his 
knees  before  it  and  exclaimed: 

"Beautiful  hands  —  beautiful  feet,  which  I 
bend  to  kiss!  Lips  that  I  so  gladly  would  love,  I 
beg  you  to  speak  to  me ! "  Because  of  the  sincerity 
of  prayer  the  statue  lived,  moved,  spoke.  And 
with  such  grace,  such  gentleness,  that  the  hearts 
of  the  three  were  enslaved. 

The  first  shepherd  declared:  "I  will  leave  the 
sheep  for  you  two  to  tend.  I  will  take  this  woman 
whom  I  made  and  return  to  my  village.  There 
I  will  marry  her  and  be  happy." 

The  second  shepherd  replied:  "What  right 
have  you  to  do  that?  It  was  I  who  made  your 
piece  of  wood  resemble  a  woman.  It  was  I  who 
gave  her  this  gown  of  silk,  this  veil,  these  gems. 
It  is  to  me  she  belongs." 

The  third  shepherd  interrupted:  "I  should 
like  to  know  what  right  either  of  you  have  to 
her?  It  was  I  who  gave  her  life.  To  you  two 
she  was  nothing  but  a  stick  of  wood.  I  prayed. 
The  gods  answered  my  prayer.  They  gave  her 
life — for  me" 

This  argument  continued,  growing  fiercer  and 
fiercer  until  they  came  to  blows.  Then  the  beau- 
tiful woman  who  had  been  made  out  of  wood  by 
the  sincerity  of  prayer,  fearful  of  what  might 
happen,  when  she  found  that  she  could  not  put 
an  end  to  their  anger,  fell  upon  her  knees  and 


l58      LETTERS    FROM    A    PRAIRIE    GARDEN 

prayed  for  help.  Straightway  the  first  two 
shepherds  were  changed  into  a  white  horse, 
which  stood  saddled  and  bridled  and  ready  to 
receive  her.  The  third  shepherd  became  a  bow 
of  such  might  and  magic  that  when  it  was  drawn 
an  arrow  flew  in  to  fit  it,  and  killed  the  person 
at  whom  it  was  pointed. 

She  mounted  the  horse,  took  the  bow,  and  set 
out.  The  snow  leopards  and  the  mountain  lions 
that  started  to  attack  her,  the  magic  arrow  killed. 
At  length  when  there  were  no  more  leopards  and 
no  more  lions  to  bar  the  way,  the  arrow  floated 
in  front  of  her,  its  head  making  the  road  along 
which  it  was  her  duty  to  travel.  She  was  obedi- 
ent. She  kept  to  the  road  that  was  made  for  her  feet 
to  go. 

Thus  endeth  the  first  leaf  of  the  one  hundred 
and  fifty-first  rose  of  the  book  of  wisdom  which  is 
called  the  Tuti  Nameh. 

De  te  — fabula.  - 


L 


LOCUSTS  ARE   LOUD   IN  THE  TREES. 

Autumn  will  be  dry.  Every  day  the  plains  will 
grow  more  barren.  But  through  this  rainless 
period  the  sky  is  at  its  finest.  There  is  really  no 
more  splendid  sky  than  hangs  over  Kansas.  In 
fact  it  is  the  only  theater  we  have  here  and  it 
is  an  unrivaled  place  for  displao .  Nowhere  else 
can  you  behold  such  scenery,  such  sumptuous 
and  resplendent  cities  as  God  builds  here  with 
the  clouds.  Here  are  battlemented  palaces,  and 
high  bastioned  moats  worthy  the  chivalric  ardor 
of  Don  Quixote.  Here  are  white  colonnaded 
marbles  and  fluted  soaring  towers,  as  caressing 
to  the  eye  as  any  the  Moorish  Caliphs  set  in 
Granada.  The  prairie  sky  with  its  changing 
mass  of  white  billowing  clouds  has  almost  ful- 
filled one  of  my  maddest  wishes,  which  is  to  open 
my  eyes  every  morning  in  a  city  that  is  new, 
strange,  and  delightful. 

To  be  sure  the  sky  has  not  that  deep,  swirling, 
Algerian  blue,  that  makes  the  heart  giddy  with 
joy,  which  Dabadie  shows  us  in  "Summer  in 
Bonzareah,"  nor  that  dry,  dust-powdered  blue 
peculiar  to  deserts,  nor  the  cold,  clean  blue  that 
wounds  like  a  knife,  which  tops  high  mountain 
regions.  But  instead  a  fine,  even,  individual 
blue  all  its  own,  with  certain  very  definite  affilia- 
tions with  promise,  youth  and  exhilaration.  E. 


w, 


INTER  IS  ALMOST  UPON  US.  THE 
leaves  are  gone  and  the  trees  are  bare.  Empty 
blue-jay's  nests  decorate  them.  My  garden  shows 
only  graceless  bunches  of  dried  stalks.  Despite 
the  cold  there  is  still  a  wanderer  of  summer  here 
—  a  mocking  bird  who  has  neglected  to  migrate. 
He  is  sitting  on  the  lowest  branch  of  a  corner 
maple  looking  disconsolate.  I  have  warned  him 
that  it  is  time  to  be  up  and  away,  but  he  does 
not  heed  my  warning.  Now  he  is  moving  his 
long,  thin  head  warily  to  look  about.  He  is 
searching  for  his  old  flower  friends.  He  seems 
grieved  and  dismayed  at  finding  the  garden  so 
lonely  and  faded.  He  feels  like  an  aged  Rip  van 
Winkle  who  awoke  to  find  a  world  grown  old. 
Now  he  is  flying  across  to  another  tree,  over  the 
top  of  the  lily  bed.  He  is  uncomfortable  here, 
too.  Since  he  can  not  find  the  lilies  he  is  looking 
in  the  direction  of  the  daisies.  No,  they  can  not 
be  found!  Nor  the  roses  nor  the  hollyhocks  nor 
the  golden  glow!  Now  he  flutes  a  little  song  that 
is  sadder  than  the  ruin  of  summer,  and  inclines 
his  head  in  my  direction,  as  much  as  to  ask  me 
what  I  think  of  it.  I  have  just  pointed  out  to 
him  the  nests  of  his  old  bird  friends,  empty 

160 


UPON    THE    PLAINS  161 

within  the  trees,  and  I  have  asked  him  if  he 
expected  summer  to  last  forever.  He  stopped 
his  weird  song  at  this  and  looked  at  me  gravely 
and  reproachfully.  He  forgot  his  mimicry  and 
his  malicious  gibes.  Even  a  mocking  bird  ought 
to  know  that  anything  so  sweet  as  summer  can 
last  only  a  little  while. 

E. 


You  SAY  THAT  I  AM  FADING  AWAY 
from  you,  fading  away  within  just  such  a  garden 
labyrinth  as  King  Henry  the  Eighth  caused  to 
be  made  at  Hampton  Court,  from  which  no  one 
unaided  could  find  the  exit? 

Does  not  that  prove  that  I  am  not  really  a 
woman  at  all,  but  only  a  nymph  —  a  creation  of 
the  mind  of  summer? 

E. 


N< 


0— NO— NO— NO!  IF  I  SHOULD  SEE 
you  I  might  like  you  —  (And  who  can  tell  how 
well!)  —  and  then  I  might  tell  you  how  to  find 
your  way  into  this  enchanted,  phantom  world  of 
pleasure  which  is  mine,  and  that  would  not  be 
right.  You  belong  to  the  world  that  is  real.  It 
is  I  that  am  the  illusion.  I  have  been  years  in 
discovering  for  myself  —  like  a  modern  Colum- 
bus—  this  delectable  land  of  the  mind,  where  I 
am  superior  to  life  and  time,  and  where  things 
that  vex  and  annoy  can  not  reach  me. 

Nothing  can  last  but  a  little  while  anyway, 
it  doesn't  make  any  difference  what  it  is.  The 
future,  however,  belongs  to  all,  and  it  is  a  gigantic 
rose  of  a  million  petals  whose  folded  leaves  shelter 

—  for  you  —  some  fresh  delight. 

You  have  the  best  of  it,  have  you  not?  Are 
you  not  in  the  land  where  dreams  —  so  they  say 

—  come  true? 

E. 


i63 


I 


IN  THE  CITY 


FOUND  YOUR  LETTER  UPON  MY 

arrival  telling  me  that  an  ocean  is  now  between 
us,  so  these  last  words  will  go  speeding  after  you 
on  the  white  wings  of  the  sea. 

With  them  I  am  sending  —  in  the  calligraphy 
of  China  —  the  seal  of  the  God  of  Laughter. 

When  you  look  up  at  night  —  on  the  other 
side  of  the  globe  —  at  the  strange  planets  swing- 
ing above  you  in  space,  do  you  suppose  you  can 
tell  which  is  ours? 

E. 


i65 


UC  SOUTHERN  REGIONAL  LIBRARY  FACILITY 

A     000056156     3 


